Oral Answers to Questions

DUCHY OF LANCASTER

The Minister for the Cabinet Office and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster was asked—

Gift Aid

Ian Lucas: What plans he has to assist charities to benefit further from the gift aid scheme.

Edward Miliband: In Budget 2008, the Government committed to a transitional gift aid rate of 22 per cent. for three years, worth £300 million to the sector, which was widely welcomed. Alongside that, we are making significant changes to the auditing, record-keeping and claims process to reduce the administrative burden on charities. We will continue to work with the charitable sector to see how the take-up of gift aid can be improved.

Ian Lucas: Gift aid has been such a successful scheme that there was real concern about detrimental effects when announcements were made about changes to the tax regime. Will my right hon. Friend ensure that there is close contact with the charitable sector, including the many small organisations, to ensure that it fully understands the changes so that the scheme can be as effective as it has been in the past?

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend is right. The Government have a good record on gift aid. Gift aid receipts were £385 million in 1996-97 and were £830 million in the latest year for which figures are available. The transitional relief that we have been able to provide has been widely welcomed by the charitable sector. My hon. Friend is right that there is still a lot of unclaimed money in gift aid, and both the Government and the charitable sector must work to ensure that it is taken up.

David Evennett: Is not the Minister concerned that the amount that charities receive in gift aid will fall as a result of the cut in income tax, and what will he do to ensure that they have more funding opportunities?

Edward Miliband: With respect, the hon. Gentleman must have missed my reference to the announcement in the Budget. The Chancellor of the Exchequer announced three years of transitional relief to tide over charities that face a cut in gift aid as a result of the cut in the basic rate of income tax to 20p.

David Evennett: In the long term?

Edward Miliband: The charitable sector thinks that the tax rate and the gift aid rate need to be tied together in the long term—and it is right—because it removes the Government's discretion to vary the amount the sector gets. We need to use the next three years to see whether we should reform the gift aid system further—I welcome any suggestions that he has—and to increase the take-up of gift aid.

Sally Keeble: Will my right hon. Friend look sympathetically at the representations that have been made to extend gift aid to subscriptions to junior sports clubs? That would be an excellent way to encourage young people to participate in sport and to reward parents and others who run the clubs, who make an enormous contribution to our communities.

Edward Miliband: I was not aware of the specific campaign, but I clearly should be. I will endeavour to look at my hon. Friend's proposal. Sports clubs play a huge role throughout the country and are an incredibly important part of the charitable sector. I shall make representations to my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

Susan Kramer: As the Secretary of State will be aware, many charities will have a hole in their budget when the transitional period is over. Surely this is the time to look again at the ability to recover VAT on charities. He will know that the EU commissioner has confirmed that member states—although not including Britain—are implementing systems compatible with EU legislation that would allow the whole charge to be reclaimed and recovered.

Edward Miliband: I understand the hon. Lady's suggestion, because it is a long-running issue for the charitable sector. To be candid, the costs would be significant, running to hundreds of millions of pounds. EU legislation also poses barriers, although I will look into the point that she makes. My feeling, from talking to people in the charitable sector, is that the argument has moved on. People welcome the gift aid reliefs, and they want to build on the system that we improved and have protected through the transitional relief that I have mentioned.

Tom Levitt: It is good news that charities now have three years to prepare for what will be a hit when the gift aid rates come into line with income tax rates. This is a good time for charities and employers to encourage the use of payroll giving. Will my right hon. Friend do what he can to increase the amount of payroll giving on which gift aid can be claimed?

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend is right. Payroll giving can play a big role in increasing the income that is available to charities. We should be honest about the fact that we can do much more to promote payroll giving. Outside work is being done on how payroll giving can be reformed to make it more attractive for people to take up, because there is nothing like having people committed to giving to a charity through their payroll. It means that the charity has some certainty about the income that it will receive. I would welcome any suggestions that my hon. Friend or others have about how to improve the system of payroll giving and increase take-up.

Anne Main: Relate is a fantastic charity that offers a valuable service in many of our constituencies. I met Sue Andrew, the Hertfordshire director of Relate, who said that the charity had previously been entitled to gift aid but was not now. Relate stresses that it suggests a voluntary donation of approximately £40 in Hertfordshire, but it does not withdraw services if a donation is not forthcoming. Indeed, some families give more. Will the Minister investigate why gift aid has not been available for Relate?

Edward Miliband: The hon. Lady raises an important issue. I have a local interest in Relate, as one of its offices is based in Doncaster. Even if that was not the case, I would endeavour to look into that point. I shall write to her.

Francis Maude: We miss the Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for West Bromwich, East (Mr. Watson) from his usual place, but he has courteously explained why he is away. I am sure that the whole House will want to send him and his wife all its good wishes for the forthcoming event.
	We welcome the transitional relief to which the Secretary of State refers, which has been given to compensate charities for the shortfall in gift aid income as a result of the Prime Minister's income tax changes, after my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) raised the issue in the Budget debate last year. What assessment has the Cabinet Office made through its social exclusion taskforce of other groups in society that are losing out as a result of the income tax changes?

Edward Miliband: I pay tribute to the right hon. Gentleman's ingenuity in bringing that point into a question about gift aid. I think that it is good that we are cutting the basic rate of tax to 20p. As we can see, that has an effect on the charitable sector, and it is right that we should try to help the charitable sector out. As I said earlier, I think that the transitional relief has been widely welcomed.

Francis Maude: Is it not clear that the belated introduction of the transitional relief on gift aid shows that the income tax changes were simply not thought through? After the kick in the ballot box that the Government received last week, do not Ministers realise that it is now time to set out in detail what relief there will be for the millions of low-paid victims of the 10p tax hike? Is it not unfair to Ministers such as the hapless Communities Secretary to send them out night after night on "Newsnight", unable to answer the most basic questions on that point? When will she be put out of her misery?

Edward Miliband: This Question is on gift aid, but I will happily answer the right hon. Gentleman's question on the other issue, with your permission, Mr. Speaker. My right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer is looking at the issues in relation to the 10p rate and he will make a statement at the appropriate time. If the right hon. Gentleman wants to have an argument between now and the next election, either about the charitable sector or about people in poverty in this country, and about which party is best to deal with those points, I say, "Bring it on". Not only do this Government have a good record on gift aid and the charitable sector, but we have a record on poverty of which we can be proud.

Social Change

Fiona Mactaggart: What recent assessment he has made of the role that charities play in campaigning for social change; and if he will make a statement.

Edward Miliband: Charities play an essential role in campaigning for change. I welcome the Charity Commission's recently published guidance, which gives greater clarity to the freedoms that charities have to campaign in order to meet their charitable purposes.

Fiona Mactaggart: Does the Minister have an estimate of the degree to which local authorities punish charities that campaign for change within their area and on behalf of residents? What can he do to stop local authorities cutting grants to campaigning charities?

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend is a former charities Minister, and she knows the issue well. She knows some of the difficulties of addressing it. Her fundamental point is absolutely right. Charities should not feel constrained from biting the hand that feeds them. Whether they are funded by an organisation, a local authority or a national Government, they should feel absolutely free to campaign against the policies of that authority or Government. I want the Commissioner for the Compact, Sir Bert Massie, to consider how we can do more locally to ensure that local organisations can campaign with freedom on local issues.

Roger Williams: In the area that I represent, public transport is inadequate for many people who do not have cars. Voluntary community transport schemes provide people with the opportunity to be taken to hospital, yet the amount of money that the schemes can pay volunteers who provide their own vehicle has been pegged. The schemes are not allowed to pay any more without tax being deducted. As there has been an increase in the price of petrol and in other costs, will the Minister consider that and decide whether the amount paid can now be increased?

Edward Miliband: I am taking away rather a lot of work today for myself and for the Secretary, Cabinet Office, my hon. Friend the Member for Corby (Phil Hope). The treatment of expenses for volunteers is a significant issue. It arose about a year ago in relation to lunch expenses for people on benefits, and we managed to get a good result with that. As I have said in answer to some other questions today, we will endeavour to look at the issue that the hon. Gentleman raises.

Sharon Hodgson: One social change that I have been working with the third sector to try to achieve is a shift towards healthier lifestyles and diets. Will the Minister join me in congratulating organisations such as the Child Poverty Action Group and Unison? They have joined me in campaigning for free, universal and locally sourced school lunches to ensure that every child in every school has a hot, healthy meal.

Edward Miliband: May I begin by paying tribute to what started off as my hon. Friend's one-woman campaign for universal free school meals? It is an ingenious campaign, and many people in this House will understand its benefits. I was recently in Hull, where the Labour council introduced free school meals in primary schools for a time, but that was unfortunately abolished by the Liberal Democrats—[Hon. Members: "Shame!"] Well, what would one expect? However, I can tell my hon. Friend that I know that others in Government are looking at this matter, and I hope that they are doing so sympathetically.

Peter Bone: Wellingborough Mind does a wonderful job of campaigning for social change in my constituency. It is funded by the NHS and the county council but, unfortunately, that funding runs out on 30 June. What would the Minister say to those organisations about providing a properly funded budget for the future?

Edward Miliband: All organisations should seek to bring stability to funding for the third sector. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will make representations to Wellingborough council—

Peter Bone: And to Northamptonshire county council.

Edward Miliband: The hon. Gentleman indicates that he is doing so, Stable funding is incredibly important for the third sector. Again, I pay tribute to the work of Mind, which does an excellent job throughout the country. From here in Whitehall, it is very difficult to ensure that every local organisation is funded, but I wish him luck with his representations.

National Youth Volunteering Programme

Mark Hendrick: What assessment he has made of the effectiveness of the national youth volunteering programme, v involved.

Phil Hope: England's biggest ever youth action scheme, v involved, started in April. The scheme funds 158 projects to recruit volunteers up and down the country, and 107 teams to support young volunteers and to help organisations to involve young volunteers. Over the coming three years, v involved will create 500,000 more volunteering opportunities. That will help it to progress towards its overall objective of 1 million new volunteers by 2011.

Mark Hendrick: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Will he join me in congratulating the Ingol and Tanterton Action Group, and in commending it for its work? The group is made up of many young people from Preston who are working in the community to develop many fantastic activities such as summer festivals, internet cafés, coaching in sports activities and DJ workshops. They are also working with older people to generate the intergenerational capacity that we need so much in our communities.

Phil Hope: My hon. Friend is absolutely right, and I certainly want to congratulate him on his work as a champion of young people and young volunteering in his constituency. The Ingol and Tanterton Action Group does terrific work, and I want to emphasise that its intergenerational nature fosters better relationships between younger and older people in the community. That can do a great deal to break down barriers, dispel myths and build community cohesion between people of different ages.

Nick Hurd: When the charity v was launched by the Prime Minister two years ago, it was set a target of raising £50 million from the private sector. How much cash has been raised so far?

Phil Hope: The charity v was charged with delivering in a variety of ways the resources that we provide, as I described earlier, and with creating match-funding opportunities as well. Some £75 million of the £117 million that v will be delivering has come via the v involved programme. The match-funding target is some £45 million. To date, v has secured more than £32 million in pledges for youth volunteering from the private sector—well on course!

Alan Meale: Is the Minister aware that we have a very active volunteer centre in Mansfield? Part of it is the new Artemis project that deals with young ex-offenders. I hope that he will give that project a fair wind today, and give us some news about its future.

Phil Hope: I have some good news for my hon. Friend: the Artemis project in Mansfield is receiving money from v to do some very interesting work on peer mentoring between older young people and young people who find themselves in trouble with the criminal justice system. I think that there is particular value in the one-to-one relationship that that can provide for young people, either when they are in custody or when they leave custody and go back into the community and need support. May I remind everybody that the first week of June is national volunteers week? I hope that every Member of the House will take the opportunity to go to their volunteer centre—my hon. Friend mentioned the one in Mansfield—and offer their services for a couple of hours during volunteers week.

Patrick Cormack: Will the Minister volunteer to learn the English language? What does all this ghastly jargon mean—v involved? It has not even got a capital letter. Will he please get rid of this awful jargon?

Phil Hope: I am struck by the thought that some intergenerational volunteering might not be amiss for the hon. Gentleman. "V" is short for volunteering. He will be glad to know that young people are getting cash to support their projects through v cashpoint, are getting involved in local projects through v involved, and are having a great time contributing to building their communities through v teams. Perhaps he might like to go down to his v volunteer centre and offer to educate himself about the contribution that young people are making through those very innovative schemes.

Gift Aid

Lynda Waltho: What steps he is taking to facilitate the take-up of gift aid among smaller charities.

Edward Miliband: In addition to the measures that I listed in response to Question 1, the Government are funding a small charities training programme that targets charities with a turnover of less than £1 million per annum to ensure that small charities can access guidance and training on gift aid.

Lynda Waltho: The Mary Stevens hospice in Stourbridge is much loved by all my constituents—so much so that it derives 82 per cent. of its income from legacies and donations. How will changes made to gift aid in the Budget assist small charities and organisations such as Mary Stevens?

Edward Miliband: Let me join my hon. Friend in paying tribute to her local charity and the work that it does. The changes that we announced in the Budget—not just the transitional relief for gift aid but changes to rules on auditing and record-keeping—are specifically designed to help small charities, which often get small donations and find that there is a lot of complication and bureaucracy involved in claiming gift aid. I hope that she will find that the changes will help her local charity.

Philip Hollobone: Websites such as justgiving.com make it easy for people who want to donate to charities to access gift aid. What specific encouragement will the Minister's Department give to such websites, so that online access can be extended?

Edward Miliband: The hon. Gentleman has just given the website a good plug. I believe that I used it, or a similar website, to sponsor someone who was running in the London marathon to raise money for a hospice. The hon. Gentleman makes an important point, and we will endeavour to look into whether there is anything more that we can do to help such websites. It is important that the Government do not try to do the task themselves, because independent organisations are doing a very good job.

Social Exclusion

Ken Purchase: What recent representations he has received on social exclusion policy.

Edward Miliband: In response to the Cabinet Office report, "Think Family", the Government recently received 90 bids from local authorities across the country to be part of the £16 million family pathfinder programme. The proposals set out how to take forward social exclusion policy in local areas better to meet the needs of the most vulnerable families. Fifteen successful areas have now been chosen.

Ken Purchase: I am surprised that the Minister has not received representations from the many thousands of people who are unfortunately trapped on council house waiting lists, and who are therefore excluded from decent housing. In fact, the Labour Government's achievement in developing council housing post-1945 was perhaps our greatest contribution to public health. The House will welcome the millions and billions that are to be spent on housing, but a great proportion of that money should go directly to local authorities, where it will be well spent helping to reduce the historic waiting lists.

Edward Miliband: Of course, my hon. Friend has been an ardent campaigner on the issue for many years, and I pay tribute to his campaigning, even if I do not agree with every part of it. He is absolutely right about the need to increase the amount of social housing that is built; that is what we are doing, through local authorities, housing associations and other means, but no doubt his campaign will continue.

Simon Burns: Will the Minister ensure that social exclusion policy includes prisoners with literacy problems and those who suffer from dyslexia so that more can be done while they are in prison to help to raise their literacy skills so that they have a better opportunity when they return to society and do not reoffend?

Edward Miliband: The hon. Gentleman raises an important subject, and I wholeheartedly concur with everything that he said. As part of our public service agreement targets, we have a target to help ex-offenders find a home and a job when they leave prison. He makes an important point, and we will look at it as part of that work.

Chris Ruane: What recent representations has my right hon. Friend received on social exclusion in seaside towns?

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend asks a pertinent question. I had the pleasure of visiting his constituency recently. I saw the amazing work that is going on in Rhyl, and I pay tribute to all the work that he and members of his local community have done. I look forward to Rhyl and many other seaside towns continuing to regenerate in the years ahead.

Greg Clark: Will the right hon. Gentleman, who has ministerial responsibility for social exclusion, take his share of responsibility for the abolition of the 10p rate, given that it has plunged 300,000 more people into poverty and hits those on the poverty line hardest? The Prime Minister has promised to listen, but many Members on both sides of the House think that the trouble is that he has listened too much to the right hon. Gentleman and his gang.

Edward Miliband: Of course, we all take responsibility for the Government's tax policy. We take responsibility for the fact that we have taken 600,000 children out of poverty since 1997; we take responsibility for the fact that we have 3 million more jobs in this country; and we take responsibility for the fact that we will continue to show that we are the best party on poverty.

Volunteering

David Crausby: What steps he is taking to encourage more young people to volunteer.

Phil Hope: The Government will invest £117 million in youth volunteering through v from 2008-2011. The youth-led volunteering charity v has the mission to inspire 1 million more young people to volunteer. Since its establishment, it has created over 210,000 volunteering opportunities. The national programme that began in April 2008 aims to create 500,000 more volunteering opportunities for young people.

David Crausby: Does my hon. Friend accept that too much paperwork and red tape deters young people from volunteering, so what can he do to avoid unnecessary time-consuming checks, especially in cases where those volunteers are not involved with children and vulnerable adults?

Hon. Members: Hear, hear.

Phil Hope: I am unused to such a tribute from the Opposition when I rise to speak. My hon. Friend is absolutely right. Baroness Neuberger, who was appointed volunteering champion by my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, identified the issue of bureaucracy and unnecessary checks on volunteers. There is anecdotal evidence of some confusion, which means that potential volunteers and, indeed, young volunteers are being checked unnecessarily, and that acts as a barrier to participation. I am therefore pleased to be able to tell the House that we will produce clearer guidance to voluntary organisations about volunteering, about when, and when not, to recheck individuals and about alternatives to checking such as seeking references, which, I hope, will reduce the barriers that my hon. Friend described.

Derek Wyatt: May I commend to my hon. Friend the work of TimeBank—the largest volunteer organisation in the UK, of which I am a patron? Will he have a word across government to introduce an NVQ for volunteering, as that would have a great impact on volunteering in schools?

Phil Hope: My hon. Friend makes a good point—it is one that he has made to me in the past—about being able to accredit and recognise, through qualifications, the contributions made by young people when they engage in volunteering. He will be glad to know that v is developing a system to bring on board the best experiences from the Duke of Edinburgh award and other schemes that give out certificates that recognise the contribution made by young people, either in their initial attempt to volunteer or if they volunteer for, say, 40 or 50 hours. We wish to find a way of building in the ability to accredit young people's contribution to the community and recognise that through volunteering and the certificate employers and universities can see the contribution that they have made to the community in which they live.

Low-income Households

Stephen Crabb: Whether the social exclusion unit has undertaken research on the effect of the tax system on low-income households.

Edward Miliband: Analysis from the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies shows that tax and benefit reforms introduced since 1997 have increased the annual incomes of the poorest tenth of the population by 12.4 per cent. or £1,300 on average. In addition, independent research confirms that tax credit and other measures have helped lift 600,000 children out of poverty during that period.

Stephen Crabb: Given the specific remit of the social exclusion unit, will the Minister state whether, prior to the last Budget, the unit provided any advice to Ministers on the entirely predictable negative consequences to people on low incomes of the abolition of the 10p tax band? If so, why was that advice ignored?

Edward Miliband: We have discussions about a range of issues with all kinds of colleagues across Government. Nobody in the House is proposing that we restore the 10p tax rate. The Opposition had to admit that yesterday. I come back to what I said in my earlier answer: we take credit for the fact that we have taken 600,000 children out of poverty—a record that the Conservative party could never match.

PRIME MINISTER

The Prime Minister was asked—

Engagements

Shailesh Vara: If he will list his official engagements for Wednesday 7 May.

Gordon Brown: Before I list my engagements, I am sure the whole House will wish to join me in sending our profound condolences to the family and friends of Trooper Ratu Sakeasi Babakobau of the Household Cavalry Regiment, who was killed in Afghanistan on Friday. We owe him and all others who have lost their lives a great debt of gratitude.
	This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in the House, I shall have further meetings later today.

Shailesh Vara: As the right hon. Gentleman is the only person in the House with experience of unseating a sitting Prime Minister, what is his own estimate of how long he has got?

Gordon Brown: Once again, the big policy questions of substance. I will tell the hon. Gentleman what the Government have done under two Prime Ministers. We have created the highest employment in history; we have cut child poverty and pensioner poverty; we have doubled investment in health and social services; we have got the best education results in our history—and none of that would have happened under a Conservative Government.

Lyn Brown: Over 5,000 of my constituents in Newham are living in substandard temporary accommodation, paying over £1,000 per calendar month in rent. That is clearly unaffordable for those who are living on low incomes, and it traps families in benefit dependency. Will my right hon. Friend confirm his commitment to building 15,000 affordable new homes in London per year, and review the benefits system to incentivise work?

Gordon Brown: Yes, we will. We have made available money for 70,000 new affordable homes, including 45,000 new social homes. That is a 50 per cent. increase, and half of those will be delivered in London. I welcome the new Mayor of London to the House. I hope he will continue the record of his predecessor in social housing and creating affordable housing.

David Cameron: I join the Prime Minister in paying tribute to Trooper Ratu Babakobau, who was killed in Afghanistan on Friday.
	The whole House will also want to send our condolences to everyone caught up in the Burmese cyclone. The Prime Minister knows that he will have the full support of those on the Opposition Benches in any action needed for the aid and assistance that clearly will be necessary.
	I join the Prime Minister in congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Johnson) on his magnificent victory. I am sure the Prime Minister has always secretly wanted to see the back of Ken Livingstone, and I am sure he will have a fruitful relationship with my hon. Friend. [An Hon. Member: "Will you?"] Indeed. Following Thursday's elections, the Prime Minister said that he would listen and lead, so let me start with an issue of leadership. Labour's leader in Scotland, Wendy Alexander, says that there should be a referendum now on Scottish independence. Does he agree with her?

Gordon Brown: That is not what she has said. The Conservative party, the Liberal party and the Labour party have joined together in setting up the Calman review, the commission on devolution. I hope that we can see progress in that commission, and we will review the progress before making any further decisions. I thought that that was the policy of the Conservative party, which supported the commission.

David Cameron: I think the Prime Minister is losing touch with reality. This is what Wendy Alexander said:
	"I don't fear the verdict of the Scottish people,"
	she told BBC Scotland on Sunday,
	"Bring it on."
	What else could that possibly mean? Can I ask the Prime Minister again? Does he agree with Wendy Alexander or not? It is not much of a leadership if no one is really following him.

Gordon Brown: The Calman commission has been set up to review the progress of devolution. I believe that all parties in the House will welcome the fact that it is looking at all these issues. When we review the progress of the Calman commission, we can make further decisions.
	What the leader of the Labour party in Scotland was pointing to was the hollowness of the Scottish National party, which said that it wanted independence, said that it wanted it immediately, and now wants to postpone a referendum until 2010-11. That is what she was pointing out. She was making it clear that what the Scottish National party was doing was against its election manifesto.

David Cameron: The one thing that people thought about this Prime Minister was that he was quite a good political fixer—and he has now lost control of the Scottish Labour party. So there has been no leadership on the Union.
	Let us turn to listening. People want to know whether this is a genuine listening exercise, or just another relaunch. In London, where we now have a Conservative Mayor, one of the biggest issues at the election was crime. Under this Government's early release scheme, nearly 24,000 prisoners have been released early from prison. The last Prime Minister, who introduced the scheme almost a year ago, described it as "very temporary". If the current Prime Minister is serious about listening to people, will he now scrap it?

Gordon Brown: We are building up the number of prison places. We have made an announcement about the new prison places that we are going to create this year and in the next few years. When we have built up the number of prison places from the 60,000 that we inherited—now 80,000—to 82,000 and then 86,000, we will make our decisions on the right thing to do about early release. But it is important to have a situation where we have built enough prison places and that is what we are going to do. Again, I thought that the right hon. Gentleman supported us on the building of prison places—and so he should.

David Cameron: So that is a no, then—no action to stop the early release of prisoners. Every week, more prisoners are going to be released under the Prime Minister's early release scheme. He is not going to listen to people when it comes to crime.
	Up and down the country, people told the Government in the clearest possible terms that they wanted to keep their local post offices. The former Home Secretary, the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke)— [Interruption.] They should listen to the former Home Secretary; he always has something helpful to say. He said that the current review was "over-bureaucratic" and should be suspended. So will the Prime Minister listen to people and halt the closure programme for the post offices?

Gordon Brown: Once again, the right hon. Gentleman is proposing to spend money that he does not have. He knows perfectly well that we are putting £1.7 billion into post offices to keep as many post offices open as possible. The London results of the review have just been published, and it has saved some of the post offices in London. But the fact of the matter is that the right hon. Gentleman has no money to be able to keep further post offices open, and he should stop misleading the electorate about what he can and cannot do.

David Cameron: So that is another no, then—he is not listening to people about post offices. When it comes to post offices, when it comes to releasing criminals and when it comes to taxing the low paid, people will just conclude that this whole listening exercise is just empty words.
	Seven months ago, the Prime Minister called off the general election and said that he wanted more time to set out his vision. Since then, we have had nearly 130 White and Green Papers, 34 Government Bills and 7,457 Government press releases. If he had a coherent vision, would not people have heard it by now? Should not everyone conclude that we have a Government who just lurch from one relaunch to another? Should they not conclude that what is missing is what is really needed—that is, a clear vision and some strong leadership for Britain?

Gordon Brown: The choice in this country is between a Government who have created jobs, stability, growth and public services and a Conservative party that has absolutely nothing to offer the people of this country. When I look at what the Conservative promises are, I see £10 billion of tax cuts, a black hole in public spending, risk to the economy and going back to the situation that we had in the early '90s. No amount of slick salesmanship can obscure the fact that there is no substance in anything the Conservatives are saying.

David Cameron: People expressed their view on the choice last week. The Prime Minister talks about salesmanship. We all know his brilliant salesmanship—this is the man who sold gold at the bottom of the market. That is the problem with the Prime Minister—he has got nothing to sell and he is useless at selling it. While we are at it, I have got a bit more advice for him. This is the Prime Minister who went on "American Idol" with more make-up on than Barbara Cartland; this is the Prime Minister who sits in No. 10 Downing street wondering— [ Interruption. ]

Mr. Speaker: Order.

David Cameron: He sits in No. 10 Downing street waiting for Shakira to call and waiting for George Clooney to come to tea. I have got a bit of advice for him: why does he not give up the PR and start being a PM?

Gordon Brown: This is a man who tries to lecture us on presentation, this is a man who tries to lecture us on style, because there is no substance in any of his questions. The choice is between a Government who have raised the minimum wage and a Conservative party that opposed the minimum wage. The choice is between a Government who have taken a million children out of poverty and the Conservative party that trebled poverty. No amount of presentation from the Conservative party can obscure the vital question that the choice in this country is between a Labour Government who deliver and a Conservative party that just talks.

Sarah McCarthy-Fry: During the '80s and early '90s, many families in Portsmouth had to cope with sky-high interest rates, rampant inflation and little likelihood of finding work. Since then, sustained investment in jobs and training has led to the highest employment levels ever. Does my right hon. Friend agree that this is a prime example of fixing the roof while the sun shines?

Gordon Brown: There are more people in employment in this country than at any time in our history, there are more vacancies for jobs, and we have cut unemployment to its lowest level since 1975. That could not have happened if we had followed the policies of the Conservative party. More than that, there are 1.8 million more home owners in this country, and that could not have happened if we had the 15 per cent. interest rates that we had under the Conservatives.

Nicholas Clegg: May I add my own expressions of sympathy and condolence to the family and friends of Trooper Ratu Babakobau? Also, I am sure that I speak on behalf of all Members of the House when I extend our expressions of sympathy and condolence to the family and friends of Ray Michie, the former Member for Argyll and Bute, who sadly passed away just last night.
	Does the Prime Minister understand the threat from the right hon. Member for Norwich, South (Mr. Clarke) when he said that the doubling of the 10p tax rate will
	"resonate until there is clarity"?
	When will we get concrete proposals to compensate all those who have been hit?

Gordon Brown: I add to the condolences that the right hon. Gentleman has sent to the family of Ray Michie, who was a very distinguished Member of this House.
	The right hon. Gentleman's party is not proposing the restoration of the 10p rate—not at all. Let me also say that the Chancellor has put his letter to the Treasury Committee and outlined the steps that he is taking to deal with the two groups that were missed out—the 60 to 64-year-olds and those people on low incomes who cannot claim the working tax credit—and he will put forward his proposals in due course. I would have thought that the Liberal party would be prepared to wait until he puts his proposals.

Nicholas Clegg: That is not good enough. This is a matter of principles—remember those? I think that everybody now knows that when it comes to helping the most needy, the Prime Minister has got no principles and the Tories have got no policies. Will he now provide an absolute guarantee that those who have lost out will be compensated in full, backdated to the beginning of April, and will not have to jump through hoops to claim what is rightfully theirs?

Gordon Brown: The Chancellor will put his proposals. The Liberal party opposed the new deal, which has helped 2 million people get into work. The Liberal party wanted a local minimum wage, not a national minimum wage, and the Liberal party opposed our child tax credit and our child trust fund. That is not a record that it should be proud of.

Mike Hall: May I add my condolences to the family of the serviceman killed in Afghanistan on Friday?My right hon. Friend is aware that the fight against crime is ongoing, and when the police introduce proposals to improve the way in which we tackle violent crime and terrorism, they should have confidence that policy makers will give those proposals serious consideration. What does my right hon. Friend have to say to those Members of this House who claim to be on the side of the police, but do not back that up when it comes to votes on measures such as the national database on DNA or the imposition of mandatory sentences for rapists and those who carry guns and knives?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We proposed tougher sentences for murder, for sexual and violent offences, and for persistent offenders; indeterminate sentences for anyone who committed serious sexual or violent crime; and five-year minimal custodial sentences for unauthorised possession of firearms. All those proposals were opposed by the Conservative party.

Michael Mates: Does the Prime Minister recall agreeing with me when I suggested to him a month or two ago that the House was going to need a much better and fuller explanation of why an increase in time is being sought by the Government for holding people in detention without charge? When is he going to give us that explanation? Would it not be a good time to do so now?

Gordon Brown: That is what the debate at the moment is about. I have appealed to Members of this House to look at the matter so that we can find a consensus. I have said that using the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which some people wish to use for this purpose, would mean going beyond 28 days, but we would have to declare a state of emergency to do so. Many people in this House would be prepared to have a period lasting longer than 28 days, but to do so we would have to declare a state of emergency.
	I and the Government are proposing that we give a power to the House. The Home Secretary, with the Director of Public Prosecutions and the head of the Metropolitan police, would have to come to this House with an order and the House would have to vote a second time on whether it approved the action to allow someone to be detained for more than 28 days before they were charged. I believe that the safeguards that we have put in place protect the citizen against arbitrary treatment. They include a judge reviewing the detention every seven days, a report by an independent reviewer, the Home Secretary being required to come to the House and a final report on how the procedure had been adopted. Those are the protections for civil liberties that people have asked for. But I have to take the advice of other people who tell me that it is important for us to have a precautionary power in place so that, if there were a multiple incident, we could go beyond 28 days with the approval of the House.
	I have looked at terrorist incidents over the past few years, and I have looked at the sophistication of terrorists who are using multiple passports, multiple telephone numbers and multiple e-mailing facilities. If there was a plot involving a number of people, we would need more than 28 days to review all the evidence. I believe that most sensible people in this House, as well as most members of the general public, support that position, and I hope that the House votes for it.

David Chaytor: In my constituency of Bury, North today—[Hon. Members: "Hear, hear!"] In Bury, we now have the only Tory leader in the country who has been subject to a police investigation into fiddling pensioners' postal votes. In my constituency of Bury, North there is a job for almost everyone able and willing to work, but the Prime Minister will know that there is severe economic pressure on many working families, particularly those on low incomes. What can he do to assist in the short term, through relieving the pressure on taxes and prices, and in the long term, by investing in the skills of our young people to maintain full employment in Bury, North?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We wish the strength of our economy to withstand the economic downturn that is happening worldwide. We will do everything in our power, working with other countries and through action we take on our own, to withstand these problems. In the next few weeks, we will look at what more we can do to help the housing market and the construction industry as a result, and we will look at what we can do to help first-time buyers, who are in a difficult position because of the rise in mortgage rates being charged by building societies. We will look at how we help those people who are subject to high utility bills. On employment, we will work with small and medium-sized businesses to ensure that they have the funds to invest for the future. In every area, we will look at what we can do to help Britain to withstand a problem that is hitting America and the rest of Europe, and I believe that the strength of the British economy will withstand the problems that we face.

Sustainable Communities Plan (Kettering)

Philip Hollobone: If he will meet the hon. Member for Kettering and local authority representatives to discuss co-ordination between the Department for Transport, the Highways Agency, East Midlands Trains and the Department for Communities and Local Government on the implementation of the Government's sustainable communities plan in the borough of Kettering.

Gordon Brown: It is vital that all Departments and their agencies work closely together to deliver the homes needed in Kettering and elsewhere. It is precisely because we need to ensure that new housing is not built in isolation and that it is delivered with transport infrastructure, utilities and public services that we have allocated over the next three years £1.7 billion for infrastructure in growth areas and new growth points. Northamptonshire has received £59 million. Since 2003, the Government have allocated in total over £250 million to Northamptonshire, made up of various growth area, community infrastructure and transport funds. This has been possible because we have been able to expand public spending.

Philip Hollobone: Local residents would like a meeting with the Prime Minister so that he can explain to my constituents why the Government's plans to increase the number of houses locally by one third by 2021 is being matched on the one hand by cuts in the train service and on the other by restrictions on the use of the local road network. Will the Prime Minister please agree to a meeting?

Gordon Brown: I can say to the hon. Gentleman that £1.7 billion is being allocated for infrastructure. Northamptonshire alone has received £250 million. I will of course look at what he says, but he has to agree with me that no Government have spent more on public services and public infrastructure than we have, and that his county has benefited as a result.

Mark Hendrick: Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating Lancashire police on their excellent work over the past 18 months in closing down cannabis factories across Preston? Will he continue to campaign against the use of cannabis, particularly given its effects on health—there are new forms of cannabis, such as skunk, that are much stronger and far more dangerous than previous forms—and the social problems and problems with crime that it causes?

Gordon Brown: I am grateful for the work that is done by the police authority and the police in my hon. Friend's area. The Home Secretary will be making a statement on this matter just after Question Time. It is generally agreed that the quantity and the type of cannabis being sold on the streets of our cities, and the threat that it poses to the mental health of many of the people using it, make it necessary that we look at this matter again. I believe that the recommendations that the Home Secretary will put forward will be in line not only with what the public want to see, but with what the police want to see. I believe that the House will be pleased that she is also taking new measures for enforcement that will be welcome in all parts of the country.

Elfyn Llwyd: Ken Livingstone, the outgoing Mayor of London—[Hon. Members: "He's gone."] Yes, of course. Ken Livingstone, the sadly gone Mayor of London—sorry Boris—has said that he is looking forward to doing a spot of gardening and taking his children to school. What is the Prime Minister looking forward to when he leaves office?

Gordon Brown: I am looking forward to building a stronger economy in Britain; I am looking forward to creating more jobs in our country; I am looking forward to building a better health service. I know that we will get no help from the Welsh nationalist party, but we will go ahead and do that for Wales as well.

Ken Purchase: May I tell the Prime Minister that last week the Wolverhampton trades council organised a May day celebration that attracted more than 1,000 trade unionists, who paid tribute to their fellow workers—dock workers—in South Africa who, in a very principled stand, refused to handle arms to Zimbabwe? May I ask the Prime Minister to give support to that action and to recognise that where trade unionists act to intervene on international business for humanitarian aims, they are to be supported, even though their Governments sometimes look a little tardy?

Gordon Brown: I have given support to those South African workers who stopped an arms shipment coming from China that would have gone to Zimbabwe. At the same time, we have been calling at the United Nations for an arms embargo, to prevent other arms and armaments from getting into Zimbabwe at this time. This is a critical time for Zimbabwe. It is important that we recognise that the African Union, the Southern African Development Community and all those who have an interest in the future of Zimbabwe should apply pressure, so that any elections that take place in Zimbabwe are free and fair, monitored by the whole international community to be seen as free and fair, so that justice is done in securing for the Zimbabwean people their democratic rights.

Colin Breed: Does the Prime Minister understand that unless his Government tackle the scourge of bovine TB soon, there will be little or no livestock industry left in the south-west of England?

Gordon Brown: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right that we have to deal with the disease, but that must be based on the scientific evidence that is available to us, and that is exactly what the Environment Secretary is looking at.

Si�n Simon: Do people want the right to see their doctors in the evenings and at weekends, or are the Tories right to scrap that right to choose and turn the clock back?

Gordon Brown: The vast majority of British people want more access to their GPs in the evenings and at weekends, and the vast majority of British people welcome the vote by the British Medical Association to give an extra three hours of medical services either on an evening or at the weekend in half the areas of the United Kingdom. I am pleased that that service is now starting. That is why it is surprising that the Conservative health spokesman said in  Pulse magazine on 29 April that he wants to restore to GPs the power to make that decision, and presumably also the power to block the extension of primary care to new providers. I do not believe that the Conservative party is acting in the interests of the national health service, and that is the tradition of the Conservative party.

Mark Lancaster: Last weekend, the Prime Minister claimed to share people's pain at the rising cost of living, so can he tell the House how much it costs to fill up a family car in his constituency and when exactly he last had to do it himself?

Gordon Brown: The cost of petrol has gone up as a result of what is happening around the world. A barrel of oil is now $110. A litre of petrol [Interruption.]

Mr. Speaker: Order. Allow the Prime Minister to speak.

Gordon Brown: A litre of petrol is now 1.10 in many places, and it is rising in some other places. The important thing is that we have postponed the fuel duty increase, and we are doing what we can to work with OPEC to get the price of oil down. I think that the hon. Gentleman would agree with me that in every part of the world, when oil prices rise, it hits households and motorists. We are doing everything in our power to get the price of oil down.

Andrew Dismore: Tomorrow, Israel will celebrate the 60th anniversary of its independence. Will my right hon. Friend join me in congratulating the Israeli people on this important anniversary of their vibrant democracy and economic achievement, particularly in the high-tech industries? Will he assure Israel of the UK's continued support and friendship into the future?

Gordon Brown: I wish to add my congratulations to the state of Israel on its 60th anniversary. Israel has come a long way in those 60 years. I look forward to being present at the Finchley united synagogue with the Chief Rabbi this evening to celebrate 60 years. Israel's future is as part of a secure middle east, and it must remain optimistic that that can be achieved. We will work with people on both sides to secure a settlementa two-state solutionwith a viable Palestine alongside a secure Israel. I believe that that is the best guarantee of the future of Israel in the next 60 years to come.

Nigel Evans: A Populus poll of Labour supporters, out today, has said that the Prime Minister should step aside for a younger, fresher and more charismatic leader. I suspect that a few of his colleagues were on the receiving end of those calls. Does he not understand people's anger about his crippling tax increases, which have hit the poorest in this country? He has two proposed tax increases for motorists: a 400 vehicle excise duty for those with family cars and a 2p increase on fuel in the autumn. Will he ditch those proposed tax increases before his colleagues ditch him?

Gordon Brown: It is right that households are suffering as a result of what has been happening in a world downturn and it is right that fuel prices have gone upand it is unacceptable that so many people have lost out as a result of that. That is why we have postponed the fuel duty rise, that is why we have increased the winter allowance by 50, and that is why we have negotiated with the utility companies a deal that, next year, 100 million will go to help low-income households in this country. I have to say to the hon. Gentleman that none of that happened under a Conservative Government when people were suffering.

Hugh Bayley: Last week, Nestl opened a brand new 15 million chocolate factory in my constituency. Does the Prime Minister agree with me that that is a vote of confidence by a foreign multinational company in the British economy, and in the city of York? Will the Prime Minister come to York, or ask his Business Secretary to come to York, to see the fundamental strength of the British economy?

Gordon Brown: I congratulate the companies in my hon. Friend's constituency that are expanding; long-term unemployment in his constituency is down by more than 80 per cent. The reality is that, while unemployment is rising in other countries, employment is rising in Britain. That is because of the fundamental strength of the British economysomething that I believe that all people who look at that will accept. We will continue to create more jobs in this country.

James Gray: Does the Prime Minister ever wonder why on earth he took the job?

Gordon Brown: I took the job for the reason that I gave in my answer to the last question: to create jobs for people; to create better public services; to tackle poverty; and to make Britain a better place. Is it not remarkable that not one question coming from the Tory Back Benches is about the substance of policy? They cannot face up to the big policy questions facing this nation.

Linda Gilroy: The Prime Minister referred earlier in his answers to colleagues to affordable housing. Can he tell us more about what he is doing to ensure that those who are struggling to pay their mortgages have the leeway to manage their budgets?

Gordon Brown: My hon. Friend is absolutely right. We are in discussions with the Council of Mortgage Lenders to enable people to get a better deal when they are faced with difficulties in paying their mortgage bills. At the same time, we have put forward proposals for a shared equity scheme that will allow more people to buy a percentage of their house, if they are not in a position to buy all of it as a result of the changes in the rates that are being charged for mortgages. We will do everything that we can to help young homebuyers to get on to the first rung of the housing ladder.

Cannabis

Jacqui Smith: With permission, Mr. Speaker, I would like to make a statement on the classification of cannabis. In July 2007, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minster announced that we would seek the advice of the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, as we are obliged to do by statute, on the classification of cannabis. I am grateful to the council for its work, and I have placed a copy of its report in the Library of the House. In reaching my decision, I have also taken into account the views of others, particularly those responsible for enforcing the law, and the public58 per cent. of whom, according to a survey carried out for the council, favour upgrading cannabis from class C.
	Cannabis use is falling significantly across all age ranges, and this is a testament to the success of the Government's drug strategy. However, I am concerned to ensure that the classification of cannabis reflects the alarming fact that a much stronger drug, known as skunk, now dominates the cannabis market. I want it to be clearly understood that this powerful form of cannabis is an illegal and harmful drug.
	Today I am publishing the results of a study undertaken with 23 police forces across England and Wales. This provides clear evidence that skunk now makes up 80 per cent. of street-seized cannabis, compared with 30 per cent. in 2002. Furthermore, its potency has increased nearly threefold since 1995. The advisory council's report confirms that cannabis use poses a real threat to health. The council is concerned about its use among young people, and points to growing evidence of a causal link, albeit a weak one, between cannabis use and psychotic illness.
	The council acknowledges that use of stronger cannabis may increase the harm to mental health. Young people may be more at risk if they first use it at an early age, and the council refers to the average age of first use being 13. It suggests that some young people might binge smoke to achieve the maximum possible intoxication, in the same way as some treat alcohol, and it concludes that if they do, the consequences
	may be very serious to their mental health.
	The council also believes that the evidence of the impact of stronger cannabis may not be clear for some years to come. It has recommended that cannabis remain a class C drug.
	I have given the council's report careful consideration. Of its 21 recommendations, I accept all bar those relating to classification. I have decided to reclassify cannabis, subject to parliamentary approval, as a class B drug. My decision takes into account issues such as public perception and the needs and consequences for policing priorities. There is a compelling case for us to act now rather than risk the future health of young people. Where there is a clear and serious problem, but doubt about the potential harm that will be caused, we must err on the side of caution and protect the public. I make no apology for that. I am not prepared to wait and see.
	To reflect the more serious status of cannabis as class B, I am clear that a strengthened enforcement approach for possession is required. As the Association of Chief Police Officers said last week:
	Should the decision be taken to reclassify cannabis, we would expect to see increased robust enforcement activity particularly in cases involving repeat offenders or where there are aggravating circumstances.
	I firmly believe that while our response must remain proportionate and offer discretion to police officers, a system of escalation is necessary. I have therefore written to ACPO today, seeking its views on a clear and workable system of escalation that is consistent with reducing police bureaucracy and maintaining discretion. That will include considering cannabis warnings, which were introduced by ACPO in 2004 to ensure that action was taken when someone was found in possession of cannabis. Prior to that, the police had to choose whether to make an arrest or to take no action. I am not against cannabis warnings, but I believe that it is unacceptable for someone to receive more than one warning and for that warning not to be properly recorded.
	I am fully aware that the system we adopt will be delivered by those on the front line, and I have asked ACPO to involve other police organisations and criminal justice partners in developing its proposals. The new approach to enforcement will not, of course, preclude officers from immediately effecting arrest. For those under 18 caught in possession, I am content that the current procedure, which uses a reprimand, a final warning and then charge, provides an appropriate escalation mechanism.
	In the last few years we have seen a massive growth in the commercial cultivation of cannabis in the UK. This cannot be tolerated. We know that the cannabis farms are controlled by organised criminals who stand to make large profits and who, as the Child Exploitation and Online Protection Centre has found, will stoop to using trafficked children on such premises. Reclassifying cannabis will help to drive enforcement priorities in shutting those farms down.
	ACPO and the Serious Organised Crime Agency are responding to this threat. There is a dedicated ACPO lead on cannabis cultivation and it is working with SOCA on a co-ordinated, targeted and robust approach to cannabis farms. That involves building a national profile of these criminal activities, using forensic and other intelligence to make the links between individual farms and organised criminal gangs. We must also focus on other ways to combat the problem. Energy suppliers are currently losing significant revenue through abstraction by organised gangs running cannabis farms. I have today written to the chief executives of the six largest energy suppliers, asking them to work with us to identify abuse and target those groups.
	We have already introduced statutory aggravating factors where supply is made on, or in the vicinity of, school premises, and where a courier under the age of 18 is used. I accept the advisory council's recommendation for additional aggravating factors to be introduced concerning the supply of drugs in the vicinity of colleges and universities, mental health institutions and prisons.
	I also accept the council's recommendation for more effective regulation of the trade in cannabis paraphernalia. It is unacceptable for cannabis use to be glamorised in any way. We will work with ACPO to look at how existing legislation and powers can be used by the police, local authorities and other partners to curtail the sale and promotion of such items.
	As the council makes clear, this is an important public health issue, and one that a change in classification alone will not resolve. Through campaigns such as the Frank campaign, we will continue to make the public aware of the health harms associated with cannabis use. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Health will also ensure the following: that we update our messages on the harms caused by cannabis; that we look into providing more advice on the health risks and where to get help through NHS Direct, NHS Choices, the Smoking Helpline, Drinkline and other public information points; that we publish a report on the health risks associated with smoking cannabis and tobacco, and, where appropriate, include advice on cannabis misuse in NHS smoking cessation services; and that we seek the advice of the four UK chief medical officers on what more needs to be done to reduce the risks to public health.
	My decision to reclassify cannabis is part of the relentless drive to tackle drugs and the harm they bring to families and communities, and I will seek to do that by the end of the year. This is the right action to protect the public, particularly the future health of young people and the most vulnerable, and I commend this statement to the House.

David Davis: I thank the Home Secretary for giving me advance sight of her statement. First, may I say that I fully support the Government's decision to upgrade the classification of cannabis to class B, even if their decision to do so has come rather late? The Government's historically lax approach to drugs has been a hallmark of our broken society under Labour. The UK has the worst level of overall drug abuse in Europe. Drug crimes have increased by almost a half under this Government, and Britain has the highest rate of teenage cannabis abuse in the European Union. We all hope that today's statement means that the Government now recognise that cannabis is a very dangerous drugthat it wrecks lives, is a gateway to harder drug abuse and fuels crime.
	Let us examine the hard facts. As the Home Secretary intimated, since the 1970s the strongest psychiatrically damaging component of cannabisTHChas increased by about four or five times in skunk cannabis, and the other chemical composition of the cannabis may have altered in a way to exacerbate the psychiatric harm. A survey of 35 studies published in  The Lancet medical journal concluded that modern cannabis users are 40 per cent. more likely to develop psychotic illness. Certainly the number of anti-psychotic drugs prescribed to young people has doubled in the last decade.
	Much of this information has been known for years, so does the Home Secretary accept that, on the grounds of psychiatric damage alone, the 2004 decision was an utterly avoidable mistake? The Government's decision in January 2004 to downgrade cannabis sent out precisely the wrong message, by encouraging the public and impressionable young people to believe that cannabis did not cause serious harm and would not be taken seriously by the police.
	Last week, the Prime MinisterI am glad to see that he is still presentsaid about cannabis-taking that
	we really have got to send out a message to young peoplethis is not acceptable.
	Does the Home Secretary accept that the downgrading of cannabis by her predecessor in 2004 sent entirely the wrong message both to young people and to the police force? Does she recognise that since that reckless decision, the number of cannabis factories, to which she referred, has more than doubled? Furthermore, the number of adults treated for cannabis abuse has increased by 51 per cent.; hospital admissions for mental illness connected with cannabis have risen by nearly a quarter; and cannabis has served as a gateway to even more harmful drugs, with class A drug abuse increasing by 43 per cent. in the past year alone. Does she accept that the effect of the policy change has been to increase the size of the cannabis market and to damage, if not destroy, many more young lives?
	This long-awaited U-turn has followed delay, dithering and indecision, when the country cries out for leadership. As the Prime Minister is sitting here, I have a question for him. He announced his intentions on this policy a year ago, but in the meantime, he wasted a year by handing it to an advisory body, which he has now ignored. The Home Secretary told us in her statement that that was required by statutebut I am unaware of any statute that required them to take a year to consider evidence that has been around for half a decade. On the Home Secretary's own figures, 2,000 new cannabis factories will have started up during that delay, and thousands of young people will have become addicted to cannabis unnecessarily. In due course, many will end up on hard drugs or in hospital unnecessarily, all because this Government could not make up their mind.

Jacqui Smith: I welcome the right hon. Gentleman's support for my statement. However, I must take issue with his suggestion that, somehow or other, we have taken a lax approach to drugs in this country over the past 10 years: we have not. That is why drug use is falling; that is why we have doubled the number of people able to get drug treatment; and that is why, as a result, the acquisitive crime most closely linked to drug use has fallen by 20 per cent. All that is due to the decisions and the success not only of the Government's drugs strategy, but of many people working in both law enforcement and drug treatment services. They should be recognised for their efforts in supporting that strategy,
	I agree with the right hon. Gentleman about the links to mental health. It is precisely the relationship between the increased strength of cannabis, particularly skunk, and, as the advisory council points out, the potential future danger of young people, in particular, binge smoking it, and the uncertainty, at least, about the resulting impact on their mental health that have driven today's decision.
	However, the right hon. Gentleman then accuses the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs of delaying the decision. That body was set up under the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971, and when considering the reclassification of a drug, it is a statutory requirement to take advice from it. As I said in my statement, I thank the advisory council not only for the 21 recommendations that it has made today, the vast majority of which I support and we will implement, but for the careful way in which it took evidence, not only from large numbers of professionals and academics, but from the public, 58 per cent. of whom agreed with the decision that we are taking today. The right hon. Gentleman may wish to rush to decisions and to throw out such important processes and evidence gathering, but I do not believe that other people do.
	Finally, I must mention the right hon. Gentleman's brass neck when he referred back to the 2004 decision. I must give him his due, because he has probably always taken a consistent approach to the reclassification of cannabis

David Davis: indicated assent.

Jacqui Smith: Unfortunately, that has not always been the case with everybody on the Conservative Benches. The right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron) supported, in a Home Affairs Committee voteon the recordthe downgrading of the classification of cannabis from B to C. The right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis) talks about reckless decisions, but perhaps he would like to take the matter up with his own leader before he levels that charge at us.

Keith Vaz: I strongly welcome the Home Secretary's statement, especially what she said about toughening up enforcement. In the Select Committee's last meeting to consider this issue, it accepted the harmful effects of cannabis and the fact that its use should be discouraged. What steps is she taking with her Cabinet colleague the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families to ensure that his Department works with the Home Office to get the message across to young people about the need to discourage cannabis use? What new resources will she allocate for that purpose?

Jacqui Smith: My right hon. Friend makes an important point, especially about young people. We are allocating more than 6 million this year, partly to the Frank campaign, which has proven very successful, with a high rate of recognition among young people, and in increasing by 12 percentage points the number of young people who now recognise that cannabis impacts on mental health. The drugs strategy, published at the end of February, made it clear that, together with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families, we will work closely with parents through a new coalition of family charities; improve the information and guidance available to all parents; and continue to provide important drug advice through Frank, and also through improving universal education and information for children and young people about drugs, alcohol and other volatile substance misuse. That drugs strategy, together with the proposals that I have set out today, forms a coherent approach that sees reclassification as the start of the process, not the end. It also takes seriously the responsibility to ensure that the public health messages sent to young people and others are communicated clearly.

Christopher Huhne: I, too, thank the Home Secretary for advance sight of her statement. Does she agree that her move will not accelerate the falls in cannabis use or the falls in psychosis, nor will it cut crime? Will she describe now the circumstances in which a five-year custodial sentence would be appropriate for cannabis possession? Will she now confess that evidence plays no part in her policy? Will she save public money by disbanding the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, and establishing a new committeea committee of tabloid newspaper editors, given that the biggest influence on her policy is the  Daily Mail, not the facts?

Jacqui Smith: I take it that the hon. Gentleman is against the decision that I have taken today. No, I will not disband the advisory council. It has made some important recommendations, which we will follow through. Nor do I accept his suggestion that the decision will have no impact on crime or mental health. I have spelled out how the reclassification will help to drive police priorities, especially in tackling the serious organised crime now involved in the cultivation of cannabis here and internationally. I have also asked the police to look carefully at enforcement for possession, including escalation.
	The hon. Gentleman's response is no surprise when we consider the history of the Liberal Democrats' drug policy. Theirs is the party that wants to legalise the sale of cannabis, that does not want to penalise those who grow cannabis, and that wants to end all jail sentences for drug possession and downgrade ecstasy from class A to class B. When they have sorted their own policy out, I will take the hon. Gentleman's questions a little more seriously.

George Howarth: As someone who opposed the declassification in 2004, I congratulate my right hon. Friend on her decision today. Does she agree that one thing that young people need is clear and accurate information about various kinds of drugs? I thank her for making it unambiguous that cannabis does cause harm.

Jacqui Smith: I thank my right hon. Friend; he is right. We have sometimes been charged with using the classification system to send a messagebut in fact part of its function, as the advisory council accepts, is indeed to send the clear and unambiguous message that the use of cannabis is dangerous and harmful to health, and should not happen. If there is more that we can do to support parents and others in giving that message to children, we should take that opportunity, and that is what I have done today.

Iain Duncan Smith: I agree with the Home Secretary's statement today. In fact, last year the Breakthrough Britain report called for this change after taking evidence from more than 3,000 people who work in the drugs industry. However, it is not enough just to threaten people with a prison sentence. We took evidence from Sweden and it was clear that it put alongside the prison sentence a full abstinence-based rehabilitation programme for every single person arrested by the police. That is the missing bit of the equation, and I urge the Home Secretary to consider it, and work to get people off drugs. Abstinence-based programmes will be the key in the future.

Jacqui Smith: The right hon. Gentleman has taken a clear evidence-based approach to this issue. He is right to say that we need to ensure that when people are sent to prison we emphasise the need to help them to get off drugs. That is why we have brought about a tenfold increase in investment in and provision of drug treatment in prison. It is also why it is already the case that when young people are stopped and found to be in possession of drugs, they are referred to the youth offending team and assessed for the support that they need to get off drugs. It is also why, in the drugs strategy published at the end of February, we were clear that abstinence should be the aim of drug treatmentbut that with many serious drugs the addiction is a chronic illness, from which it may take between five and eight years to recover. Abstinence should of course be the aim, and the additional investment that we have put into drug treatment has ensured that it is now far more successful.

Paul Flynn: This will be hailed as another tough policybut, sadly, tough policies have never worked. We have the worst drug problem in Europe, alongside the harshest penalties. I urge my right hon. Friend to look at the new convention on drugs accepted by the Council of Europe, which seeks to move the emphasis away from the criminal justice system and locking people up for using drugs, towards systems that workthe health outcomes. We have a good record in recent years in concentrating on the health outcomes, but we have had 37 years of tough policies. When can we have an intelligent policy?

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend, too, has taken a consistent position on this issue. My only disagreement with him is that I do not think that we need to make a choice between enforcement and the emphasis on treatment that he advocates. Both the previous drugs strategyover the past 10 yearsand the newly published strategy enable us to send out a tough message on enforcement and to invest in prevention and treatment. That approach has resulted not in failure, as he claims, but in considerable success in reducing the usage of all drugs at all ages.

Ann Widdecombe: I very much welcome the Government's U-turn on this matter, but will the Home Secretary accept that the years between the downgrading of cannabis and today have been a wasted opportunity? Will she also accept that if she is concerned about enforcement, she should consider the possibility of fixed penalty fines, as they do not involve the police in all the hassle of cautions and court cases, but do act as a deterrent and are relatively quick to administer?

Jacqui Smith: On the right hon. Lady's first point, I must point out that notwithstanding the decision to reclassify in 2004, cannabis use has continued to fall, because of other actions that we took. However, she makes an important and useful point about the use of fixed penalty notices. ACPO has suggested those as a possible way to escalate the enforcement response to possession, and I hope that it will hear her words, and what I have said about the issue.

Margaret Moran: I welcome my right hon. Friend's robust approach to prevention and protection. Will she join me in congratulating Luton police on closing down large numbers of cannabis factories run by illegal immigrants, who are often exploited? Will she also look at the possible exploitation of another vulnerable group, namely drug addicts seeking to rehabilitate themselves, who are being lured into private rehabilitation clinics that have no discernable regulation and can easily exploit very vulnerable people? In one case in my constituency, such a clinic employs ex-convicted drug addicts. Will the Secretary of State urgently look into this to ensure that people are properly rehabilitated within a proper drugs strategy?

Jacqui Smith: I will take the opportunity that my hon. Friend has offered to congratulate the police in Luton on their action in closing down cannabis farms. A lot of good work has been done across the country by police forces and others. I accept what my hon. Friend says about the danger to drug users when they are lured into private rehab clinics that lack good regulation. That is precisely why, as part of the drugs strategy, we also emphasise the need to continue to develop high-quality drug treatment that is appropriately regulated. I will certainly bear in mind my hon. Friend's points.

Phil Willis: The Science and Technology Committee considered drug classification in its report of 2005-6 and concluded that it was not based on clear evidence. The Secretary of State has indicated yet again that the decisions being made are not based on evidence, but are an example of Government policy dictated by othersI shall not mention the  Daily Mail, as my hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Chris Huhne) did.
	A key issue that the Secretary of State brought up in the statement is the need to toughen up law enforcement. This is a law enforcement issue, but she has made no reference to why we cannot close down illegal cannabis factories using the current law. That has nothing to do with classification. If she is so concerned about young people, why are the under-18s the only group for whom she intends not to change the current law enforcement?

Jacqui Smith: As chair of the Science and Technology Committee, the hon. Gentleman produced a report to which the Government responded in detail at the time and, I think, we rejected the main recommendation that there should be a fundamental change in the classification process. I dispute the suggestion that the decision is not based on evidence. As I have outlined, the decision is based not inconsiderably on the evidence that I have produced today from the survey that we commissioned of police forces about the strength of skunk, linked to what the advisory council has identified as a potential and serious threat arising from the relationship between young people binge smoking and much more potent and stronger cannabis. Of course, in making my decision I needed to bear in mind the impact on police priorities. A reclassification from class C to B will be likely to drive police priorities and sentencing when it comes to drug dealing and cultivation. I also needed to bear in mind the impact on public perception. Neither police priorities nor public perception are part of the remit of the advisory council.
	The current law on possession and young people already enables an escalation from reprimand to final warning to charge. The problem for those over the age of 18 is that enforcement does not allow that process of escalation. I am asking the police to find a way to provide that.

Kate Hoey: As someone on the Labour Benches who voted against the downgrading of cannabis, I welcome the Home Secretary's statement. Does she agree that although this move is not a panacea to the drugs problem in this country, it sends a clear message and supports the many parents in my constituency who want to send the right signal to their children? It is important that we have now sent a message that smoking cannabis is wrong and harmful. We should get that message across and unite behind it.

Jacqui Smith: My hon. Friend is right. The advisory council is clear that the use of cannabis is not only illegal but seriously harmful to health. I believe that it is our responsibility to make clear to people the fact that cannabis is harmful. My hon. Friend makes an important point about the need to reinforce support for parents who sometimes have a difficult job in making clear to their children the dangers that they face. One such danger is the potential use of cannabis, and I want to do everything I can to support parents in protecting their children from the certain health dangers that come from the use of cannabis.

William McCrea: May I assure the Home Secretary that my right hon. and hon. Friends wholeheartedly support her action in reclassifying cannabis to a class B drug? We believe that she will have the support of people throughout the UK. It is true that the scourgeindeed, the blightof drugs in society is a public health issue that will be solved by no single piece of legislation. Does the Home Secretary agree that it is essential that her decision is enforced robustly by the police alongside an extensive rehabilitation strategy?

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman is right. The fact that under the current system it is possible for an adult to be given more than one warning on cannabis and there is the possibility that those warnings have not been properly recorded, demonstrates that the system is not as robust as the measures that a class B classification would require. That is why the police have recognised the need for a more robust and escalated response and why I have asked them urgently to provide me with advice about a workable way to deliver that.

Mike Hall: My right hon. Friend will rest assured that the Cheshire police, who do an excellent job in closing down cannabis farms, will welcome her announcement. May I press her on one particular issue where the police are finding difficulties? When the police close down cannabis farms and arrest workers in the farmswho are usually illegal immigrantsthey take them in front of the magistrates court. The magistrates grant those immigrants bail, and they then disappear and set up work elsewhere. Will the Secretary of State use her influence to ensure that when the police take people before the courts they are refused bail, so that the police can get on with prosecuting them?

Jacqui Smith: I am not sure that I can use my influence on bail decisions, which are of course rightly for the court system. However, my hon. Friend makes an important point about the relationship between immigration crime and policing. That is why we are developing strong immigration crime partnerships across the country, where the local police work with those in the UK Border Agency to ensure that illegal immigrants are not even taken to court, but that the action that is warranted by the fact that they are illegal is taken. In many cases, that may well mean deportation.

Humfrey Malins: Every wretched, pathetic heroin addict whom I have to sentence began their drugs career in their teens on cannabis and skunk. That is why I am a little disappointed that the Home Secretary is retaining the system of reprimand, warning and so on for those aged 18 and under. May I urge her to think again and to realise that to catch the problem early by making access to rehab compulsory at the very beginning for cannabis takers in their teens, as they do in Sweden, would have a better effect than just issuing a warning and so on?

Jacqui Smith: No. If it were only a warning, I would agree with the hon. Gentleman, but let me make it clear that the escalation process for young people already involves taking people to the police station and a reference to the youth offending team with assessment for drug treatment and rehabilitation. I believe that that is an important element of preventing young people from going on to more serious drugs. On the hon. Gentleman's point about the gateway, the advisory council does not believe that cannabis has a particularly strong gateway effect.

Brian Iddon: We know very little about the abuse of substances and the damage it does to the mind. That includes alcohol, incidentally, as well as cannabis. Will my right hon. Friend persuade the Government to make far more money available for research to establish whether there are causal links between drug misuse and mental illness?

Jacqui Smith: As part of the drugs strategy that we published in February, we said that drug addiction should be a priority for the Medical Research Council. The advisory council has put forward recommendations for more research into the link with mental health, so I think that my hon. Friend makes an important point.

Evan Harris: The Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs looked at the questions of harm, potency and the potential for binge smoking and recommended that cannabis should be class C. So the Government's proposal to make it class B cannot be rational or based on evidence about any of those issues: instead, it has to be based on what the police have asked for and on the Government's perception of public views. When the police give more priority to policing the possession of cannabis, what will they deprioritise? Does the Home Secretary accept that the policy that she has announced today drives a coach and horses through any claim that the Government might make about making evidence-based policy in this area?

Jacqui Smith: First, we have long known that the classification of cannabis arouses both controversy and differing views. The hon. Gentleman and his colleagues seem to be suggesting that there is a single, simple and objective scientific view on the matter, but there is not and their approach undermines the knowledge that he usually displays about scientific matters. In addition to the evidence in the advisory council report, it is perfectly reasonable to take into consideration evidence and views about police priorities and public perception. That is what I have done, and I believe that it will provide a route for the police to prioritiseas they shouldaction against serious organised crime based on dealing. With respect to possession, I have asked the police to find ways that will help to provide the escalation that I have talked about in a way that is workable and reduces bureaucracy. I believe that it will be possible to do that.

Peter Lilley: When a Minister says that a policy is designed to send out a signal, that is a sure symptom that it contains no substance, as the Home Secretary should be aware. She will know that I take a view that is very unpopular on both sides of the Housethat the key substantive goal is to break the link between the supply of cannabis and the supply of hard drugs, and to stop driving soft drug users into the arms of hard drug pushers. Is there anything in her statement that addresses that issue? Has she considered the evidence from Holland, where far fewer people move from cannabis to hard drugs, because they get cannabis from people who do not push hard drugs?

Jacqui Smith: In Holland, of course, the policy is being reviewed, because of a lack of success. I did identify the point made by the advisory council about whether cannabis was a gateway drug. The council's view, and that of others, tends to be that it is not a significant gateway drug, so the decisions that I have announced today are based largely on the certain danger to health from the use of cannabis, on the very considerable risks extending into the future attached to the relationship between cannabis use and mental health problems, and on the certain link to serious organised crime. Given those considerations, I believe that the reclassification of cannabis is right. I do not feel that I have to apologise for wanting to send a clear message or signal about the danger of cannabisalthough, as I have spelled out today, that will of course be backed up by extremely practical actions to maintain our commitment to keeping cannabis use in this country on a downward trend.

Douglas Hogg: Does the Home Secretary accept that her predecessor's decision in 2004 to downgrade cannabis has encouraged the large-scale commercial development and sale of skunk? Did it not undermine the principles that she has been trying to outline today? While reclassification is highly desirable, surely it demonstrates the folly of her predecessor's decision.

Jacqui Smith: The right hon. and learned Gentleman might like to take that up with the right hon. Member for Witney (Mr. Cameron), who agreed with the decision at the time. I do not believe that it was necessarily wrong, nor that it has led to the development of organised crime and cannabis farming, but I do believe that there has been a considerable change in the strength of skunk and the proportion of the market that it now takes up. Alongside its potential relationship with serious mental health problems, that is what has driven my decision today.

Christopher Chope: I very much welcome the Home Secretary's statement. She said that there is a compelling case to act now, but in her statement she made it clear that she would not be able to introduce the reclassification until the end of the year. My Bill on the reclassification of cannabis is coming up for its Second Reading on Friday: why do the Government not adopt it, so that they could get the reclassification on the statute book a lot sooner?

Jacqui Smith: The process requires parliamentary approval, and the impact assessment is the appropriate way to introduce the reclassification. The route that I am proposing is the one already laid down in legislation, and I believe that it can achieve our goal quickly.

Angela Watkinson: Now that the Home Secretary has taken this important decision, may I urge her to consult the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families and leading campaigners against the illegal use of drugs among children? They should look carefully at how drugs education in schools can be improved, so that young people get real warnings about the consequences of drug use. Will she also take a fresh look at the website Frank? Sometimes it can trivialise the subject, and make it look like a bit of a joke.

Jacqui Smith: I have already discussed the matter with my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families. The hon. Lady is right that we need to improve drugs education in our schools, and we said as much in the drugs strategy. However, I disagree with her about Frank: the site has had considerable success in getting traction with young people, and in increasing the proportion of young people who recognise that there is a link between cannabis and mental health problems. Sometimes, advertising campaigns that are not convincing for those of us of a certain age nevertheless work on those for whom they are intended.

David Burrowes: The Home Secretary has talked about robust enforcement and drugs treatment, so why is the cannabis strategy so divorced from reality? Why does not the Serious Organised Crime Agency have a target to enforce the interdiction against cannabis coming into this country? Why do people presenting themselves to police stations, courts or prisons find that there is no dedicated cannabis rehabilitation? Why do drugs courts have no power

Mr. Speaker: Order. One supplementary question is fine, but there were about four there.

Jacqui Smith: I do not necessarily agree with the hon. Gentleman, as important work is already going on. When SOCA produces its annual report, he will see that it has made considerable progress in preventing the import of illegal drugs and their trade in this country. I take very seriously the views of people on the front line who are responsible for enforcement, and it is for that reason that we will work through the enforcement process with the Association of Chief Police Officers and the other bodies who will carry it out.

Anne Main: As a parent and someone who had not been elected to this House in 2004, may I say that I greeted the downgrading of cannabis with some bemusement? The Government downgraded cannabis but kept its possession a criminal offence. Does the Home Secretary accept that allowing criminals to control the strength of the substance being supplied to young people meant that it was inevitable that they would get a bad lot? I am pleased by the regrading, but will she elaborate on what she said in her statement about what she called the glamorisation of cannabis paraphernalia? Is she seriously suggesting that we should criminalise people for wearing t-shirts or pendants decorated with leaves? What will happen to the people who provide that merchandise?

Jacqui Smith: No, I am not suggesting that but, as a parent, I do not want head shops on my high street. They have cannabis leaves in the window and flog the stuff that people use to consume cannabis. In my book, I do not want them in my neighbourhood. I do not think that anyone else should. The advisory council was clear about that, and that is why I want to work with local authorities and the police to close such shops down. I am sure that the hon. Lady, as a parent, would want that to happen.

Jeremy Wright: I welcome the statement made by the Home Secretary today. May I invite her to recognise that the period of time when cannabis has been a class C drug has persuaded many young people to believe that it is neither as harmful nor as illegal as it once was? I want her to focus on two things. First, in the education programme that she has mentioned, will she focus on the strength of cannabis now, so that people are persuaded that it is not the same drug that they perceived it to be during its period of lower classification? Secondly, will she have a word with the Crown Prosecution Service to ensure that, in prosecuting offences where class B drugs such as cannabis appear on the same indictment as class A drugs, it will not quietly forget about the cannabis offences? The CPS should continue to prosecute cannabis offences fully.

Jacqui Smith: The hon. Gentleman makes two fair points. First, we certainly need to look at the Frank campaign to make sure that the increased strength of cannabis is fully represented in it; he is right about that. Secondly, I will ensure that the Crown Prosecution Service hears his words about the requirement not to bury a cannabis offence, even if it is the lesser of two drugs offences.

Point of Order

Stewart Hosie: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. In Prime Minister's questions, the Prime Minister said that the Scottish Government were seeking to postpone a referendum until 2010-11 and that the Scottish Government were acting against its...manifesto. That manifesto explicitly set out the timetable for the referendum in 2010. In misrepresenting that fact, I fear that the Prime Minister has inadvertently misled the House. It is far from the case that the referendum is being delayed or that the manifesto promise is being broken; it is a promise that the Scottish Government intend to keep. What powers do you have, Mr. Speaker, to have the Prime Minister withdraw his remarks or correct the inadvertently misleading impression that he gave the House?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Gentleman has put on the record the point of view of the Scottish Government and the First Minister, and I think that we should leave matters at that.

Immigration (Discharged Gurkhas)

Bob Russell: I beg to move,
	That leave be given to bring in a Bill to amend the immigration rules in connection with the requirements for indefinite leave to enter and remain in the United Kingdom as a Gurkha discharged from the British Army.
	The Gurkhas have a unique place in the history of our country and in the hearts of the British people. For around 200 years they, the bravest of the brave, have served Britain with outstanding courage and loyalty. They continue to play a vital role in today's Army, both at home and overseas. Indeed, only a few weeks ago Prince Harry paid tribute to their role in Afghanistan. Today, about 3,000 Gurkhas serve in Her Majesty's armed forces. That represents more than 3 per cent. of the British Army. Our under-strength, overstretched forces would be in a more difficult situation if it were not for the Gurkhas, yet despite their astonishing service, many former Gurkhas are treated disgracefully. To the shame of this country, Gurkhas who left the Army before 1997 are not allowed to stay in the United Kingdom.
	My Bill seeks to amend the Immigration Act 1971 to enable Gurkhas to be granted indefinite leave to enter and remain in the UK under the category of Gurkha discharged from the British Army. It is a small, simple Bill, but one that would speak volumes. It has support in all parts of the House. To their credit, in 2004 the Government introduced changes that benefit today's Gurkhas; that is appreciated. Those who retire from the Army can now stay in the UK should they so wish, but the changes do not apply to those who left prior to 1997, because it is claimed that before that date they were based in Hong Kong and therefore were not fully part of the UK forces. That is outrageous nonsense and an insult to men who served in Her Majesty'sin some cases, His Majesty'sarmed forces, serving the UK's interests in many parts of the world.
	It is argued, somewhat insultingly, that Gurkhas who retired before 1997 could not generally show strong enough links to the UK. The hollowness and callousness of that arbitrary cut-off date was illustrated in the most powerful way when Victoria Cross winner Tul Bahadur Pun was initially denied entry to this country, although he is a man whose loyalty and service to the UK was recognised with the award of the VC for his action in single-handedly storming a Japanese machine-gun post during the second world war, in the face of intense machine-gun fire. That act of bravery was not unique. There are countless other stories of the bravery of Gurkha soldiers who never served in Hong Kong.
	Most of our constituents have great affection for the Gurkhas. That is certainly the case in the garrison town of Colchester. I am confident that constituents share my view that the 1997 cut-off date is not morally acceptable. To add insult to injury, retired Gurkhas living in the UK now face deportation, yet soldiers from Commonwealth countries can be granted the right to UK citizenship after only four years' service.
	The moral case for the provisions set out in my Bill, which has all-party support, is best illustrated with the following example. Mr. Madam Gurung served in the British Army for 24 years. He retired in 1993 and applied for the right to live in the UK, but his application was refused by the Home Office. All that he wants to do is to work as a bus driver or security guard here in the UK. He currently lives in one-bedroom accommodation in Tonbridge, where he is awaiting news of his appeal. He is prevented by law from working, and subsists on handouts from concerned friends. Is that how a man who served in the British Army for 24 years should be treated? Many other former Gurkhas are going through the same tortuous process of immigration appeals. They are destitute, in limbo, never sure of their future. Forbidden from working, they are not even second-class citizens in the country that they served so loyally for many years. They are relying on the charity of friends, comrades and neighbours. It is a disgrace that some of our former soldiers have been condemned to such a life.
	In any survey or poll, the massively overwhelming majority of citizens want the right to British citizenship extended to the pre-1997 retirees. The retired Gurkha community in this country is hard-working and entrepreneurial. The Government need have no fears about them in any way being a drain on the public purse. The reverse is the casethey would be net contributors. Experience in areas where they have settled clearly shows that their hard work and high standards of citizenship add positively to our economy and our culture. The numbers involved are small given the number of people who annually migrate to the UK. It is estimated that there are about 1,000 retired Gurkhas in the UK awaiting results of appeals. Back in Nepal, it is considered that most elderly retired Gurkhas would wish to remain living there. According to best estimates, the maximum number of retired Gurkhas who may possibly want to come here is under 10,000.
	British people are frustrated and angered by the unfairness. They do not understand why the Government will not allow a relatively small number of people, all of whom have served in the British Army for a number of years, to live here. The sentiments and provisions of the Bill transcend party politics. The Gurkhas enjoy wide support across the House and the nation. The situation is becoming more urgent by the day. A few weeks ago, outside Parliament, I and some other Members witnessed 50 retired Gurkhas handing in their long service and good conduct medals in protest at the way in which they are being treated. There was extensive coverage of the event in newspapers and on television. The sight of such loyal, brave and dignified people being pushed to such a desperate act filled me with shame.
	The Bill seeks to give voice to what I believe is the will of the British people. Let the Gurkhas stay! I commend the Bill to the House.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	Bill ordered to be brought in by Bob Russell, Miss Ann Widdecombe, Mr. Don Touhig, Nick Harvey, Patrick Mercer, Mr. Paul Keetch, Mr. Paul Burstow, Mr. David Drew, Andrew Mackinlay, Andrew Rosindell, Mark Pritchard and Mr. Bruce George.

Immigration (Discharged Gurkhas)

Bob Russell accordingly presented a Bill to amend the immigration rules in connection with the requirements for indefinite leave to enter and remain in the United Kingdom as a Gurkha discharged from the British Army: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time on Friday 17 October, and to be printed [Bill 107].

Opposition Day
	  
	[11th Allotted Day-First Part]

Civil Service

Mr. Speaker: I now come to the main business, an Opposition day debate on the Government's management of the civil service and communications. I inform the House that the amendment in the name of the Prime Minister has been selected.

Francis Maude: I beg to move,
	That this House notes with concern the Government's management of the Civil Service; condemns the excessive increase in the Government's spending on communications, advertising and marketing; further notes with alarm the increasing number of civil servants employed as press and communications officers despite the aims of the Gershon Review to reduce the administrative costs of Government; observes the increase in the number of political ministerial adviser appointees; further notes the creation of bodies and quangos which are unaccountable to the public; considers there to be widespread failures in the efficient implementation of Government policies by No. 10 Downing Street, Government departments and agencies; and calls on the Government to enshrine Civil Service independence in law in a Civil Service Act, bring in a strengthened Ministerial Code and a more transparent means of enforcing it, ask the Committee on Standards in Public Life to establish a code of conduct for the impartiality and accuracy of Government publications and advertising campaigns, and to take urgent steps to restore trust in the UK system of government by making it more efficient, transparent, accountable and effective.
	I start by declaring the interests against my name in the Register of Members' Interests.
	The Tony Blair era of government became synonymous with spin. At the very outset of that Government back in 1997, there were huge increases in the number of special advisers; the figure more than doubled. Two special advisers in Downing street were given, completely without precedent, powers to give orders to conventional civil servants. In addition, a large number of departmental press secretaries who were already in place, and departmental heads of the information service who were permanent civil servants in the Government Information and Communication Service, were replaced with appointees who were more or less partisan.
	At the time, eyebrows were raised and mildly controversial concerns were expressed, but after all, the Government were elected with a substantial majority and nothing that was done could be said to be illegal. However, it was nakedly a sharp turn away from the conventional approach of reliance on an impartial and professional civil service. That became the hallmark of the Blair era of governmentthe subordination of all considerations to the partisan political interests of the Labour party. In no Department was there a greater dedication to the cult of spin than in Her Majesty's Treasury. We all rememberI do so vividly, as I was shadow Chancellor: one of many holders of that postthe notorious double-counted spending increases in the pre-Budget report of autumn 1998, in which spending increases for the whole comprehensive spending review period were conveniently added together to give a sum much greater than that which was being spent. That was the first indication that with the then Chancellornow Prime Ministerit was wise to count the spoons carefully and decipher the fine print with a magnifying glass before deciding to rely on what he said.
	Despite that history, it is fair to say that when the Prime Minister took office in the middle of last year, there was a sigh of relief that the first announcement of the age of change was that the era of spin was definitively over. Parliament, we were told, was to be told about things before the press and the media. Spin was consigned to historya relic of the Blairite-Mandelsonist era of the past. The right hon. Gentleman said that
	one of my first acts as Prime Minister would be to restore power to Parliament in order to build the trust of the British people in our democracy.
	At the time, the soon to be elected deputy leader of the Labour partynow the Leader of the Housemade an even more explicit promise:
	In future, under a Gordon Brown regime, we need to have no spin, no briefing, no secrets, and respect for Parliament.
	The right hon. and learned Lady's final point about treating Parliament with respect and making statements to the House before the media was instantly more honoured in the breach than in the observance. We have worked out that on average, the media have been briefed about two announcements a week before they are made to Parliament. Often, announcements are not made to Parliament at all, even after the event.
	What of the pledge to cut back on spin, and put the era of spin in the past? The simple truth is that there has been no reduction in the number of spin doctors and special advisers from the Blair era, or perhaps only a tiny one. The age of change turns out to be the age of no change. The publication of the White Book by the Central Office of Information, which was delayed until September last year to take account of the changes since the Prime Minister took over from Tony Blair, effectively shows that there has been no reduction at all. In fact, it took some time for the document to be published, and a number of questions from my right hon. Friends and me to elicit that information. Indeed, the Government's answers, to specific questions, Department by Department, on the scale of the spin machine are a master-class in the spinning of information to give a false impression. They exclude, for example, the majority of communications personnel, limiting the numbers to the narrowest possible definition of press officer.
	The White Book directory tells the full story of a Government spin machine that has spiralled out of control. Advertising costs have also spiralled. The Government have spent over 800 million on advertising in the past five years alone. The annual spend has quadrupled since Labour came to power. No doubt under the rigorous financial stewardship of the Prime Minister, assisted by the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster as his adviser for much of the time, it was spent immensely prudently. Is the advertising spend simply the overhang of the reckless Blairite era? No, because the figures clearly show that since the Prime Minister took over, the advertising spend has increased still further by four times the rate of inflation.
	Taxpayers are entitled to ask whether they are getting a good return on the money that is being spent. Many Conservative council candidates who fought elections last week may think it was well spent, because the results were not bad for them. Even taxpayers who belong to, or support, the Labour party are asking that question because, after all, Labour's electoral interests were clearly intended to benefit from those huge spends, including on advertising to promote the merits of neighbourhood policing in the middle of the local election campaign. That is a questionable use of taxpayers' money in supposedly non-partisan information programmes.
	The results of last week's elections suggest that, from the Labour party's point of view, it was a wretched use of money, because it ledI believe directlyto its worst position since the war; I do not mean the last war but the first world war. We have to go back a very long time indeed to the infancy of the Labour party to find a time when it did as badly as it did last week.
	It is worth spending a little time looking at the Prime Minister's explanation last weekend of what went wrong, because it bears directly on the substance of today's motion. He said,
	I've spent too much time...looking at the detail of solving people's problems.
	He also said,
	I've spent too little time thinking about how we can get our arguments across.
	He was saying that the Government were not doing enough spinning; they were spending their time earnestly looking over the fine detail of policy programmes to be absolutely sure that they had got them right. That was supposed to conjure up an image of an incredibly high-minded Prime Minister blundering around Downing street in the small hours of the morning, setting off security alarms while trying to unlock his office, because he was desperate to refine subsection (27)(a) of the bin charges Bill, or to rewrite paragraph 147 of his Chancellor's Budget speech, or to work out with mathematical precision exactly why 42 days' detention without charge was the right answer, rather than 40 or 44.
	For somebody supposedly obsessed with substance, as the Prime Minister constantly tells us at the Dispatch Box, and the detail of solving people's problems, he has not made a fantastically good fist of it. Abolishing the 10p tax rate was entirely his idea; indeed, it was his idea to create it in the first place. However, when it came to be implemented

Chris Bryant: What does that have to do with the debate?

Francis Maude: I will tell the hon. Gentleman exactly what it has to do with the debate. It is about allowing the Government's emphasis and focus on spin from the outset to overcome the need to get the detailed management of policy implementation right. It becomes clear, and Ministers have had to admit, that that policy was not thought through. We find the Lord High Chancellor, as we understand he likes to be called, generously apologising for the mistakes that the Prime Minister had made.
	When it comes to the package of changes promised to buy off the Labour rebellion, spin has yet again trumped substance. Fourteen months after slipping abolition into the fine print of the Budget paperwork, the Government still cannot say what the effects of the package will be. We are toldoff the record, of coursethat the Chancellor has given a categoric pledge, but there is still, amazingly for such a supposedly substance-obsessed Government, no actual package in sight. Hence the pitiful sight of the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government on Newsnight last night fending off the most basic questionswill the changes be backdated, will all the losers be compensated

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Will the right hon. Gentleman relate his comments to the words of the motion tabled by the Leader of the Opposition?

Francis Maude: I am happy to do so, Madam Deputy Speaker. My argument is that this is a Government whose obsession with spin, whose removal of resources into the communications side of government, has fatally weakened their ability to formulate and deliver policy in practice.

Ian Liddell-Grainger: My right hon. Friend is remiss in not bringing to the fore all the delivery units in No. 10, all the blue-sky thinking units and all the quasi-political systems that are superseding the civil service in the eyes of the Prime Minister and the political lite. Does my right hon. Friend agree that that is unacceptable and a waste of taxpayers' money, and that they are not accountable to anyone, least of all the House?

Francis Maude: Those units are meant to be accountable to the Prime Minister, but the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster may want to comment on that when he speaks. The creation of all those central departments with hundreds of personnel in them was the result of the warfare going on between the Treasury and Downing street. Because the Chancellor, as he then was, was constantly building up the Treasury's own resource to stamp his authority over the whole of domestic policy, Tony Blair was constantly trying to counter that by creating countervailing units at the centre of government. The result was that the whole thing spiralled out of control, and there are thousands at the centre of government who were not there before.
	One of the things that I remember from the way the Government operated in the 1980s, when I was junior Minister, was that, as my right hon. and hon. Friends who were there at the time will remember, No. 10 operated with quite a strong grip over the way the Government worked, with a private office of half a dozen and a policy unit of 10. It did not need delivery units or huge numbers [Interruption.] I hear the Secretary, Cabinet Office, the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope), talking about substance. We constantly hear complaints from the Government that we are not engaging on substance. I am concerned with exactly the issues of substance. The Government are so obsessed with spin that they are consistently getting the answers wrong on major issues of huge importance to the public.
	Let us look at the proposal on capital gains tax in the Budget, announced with such certainty in the pre-Budget report. The Prime Minister and the Chancellor had rapidly to find the reverse gear when the detail turned out, once again, not to have been thought through. The same with the proposal on non-domsanother humiliating U-turn when the package fell apart. Screening for clostridium difficile in January

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. I think the right hon. Gentleman has made his point. May I remind him again of the substance of his motion?

Francis Maude: Madam Deputy Speaker, I am simply attempting to illustrate the problems that have arisen and the complaint that we make about the Government's approachthe way in which, on substantial issue after issue, spin trumps substance. They get the substance wrong. They are so obsessed with trying to get the spin and the presentation right, and doing it incompetently, that they get not only the substance wrong, but the presentation desperately wrong.
	On so many issues, decisions have been taken not with a view to the substantive merits of the argument, but on 42 days, on the income tax changes, on non-doms, on capital gains tax, ineffectively to try to wrong-foot the Opposition, rather than get the answer right. Far too much time is spent badly on presentation, and not enough time is spent on getting the substance right. The Government press on, claiming that they are slaving away solving people's problems, as the Prime Minister puts it, but that has nothing to do with the substantive need.
	Instead of the sober, steady focus on solving problems, we have seen a Prime Minister in a panic, hiring ever more spin and PR advisers to join the Downing street spin cycle. The rate of recruitment makes Tony Blair look like Gandhi. Hot on the heels of Stephen Carter from Brunswick, we saw David Muir from WPPto direct political strategy, we are told. A few days later Nick Stace was appointed to beef up, we were told, the communications team. Mark Flanagan was named the head of digital communications at No. 10. Nicola Burdett was brought in to avoid visual gaffesdefinitely a full-time job. There is effectively a weekly column in  PRWeek charting the weekly appointment of new recruits to Downing street.
	Our contention is that in the face of the relentless focus on the spin machine, the morale of the civil service is at an all-time low. Its independence has been sapped by Ministers who have used it constantly to pursue their narrow partisan interests, rather than to solve the problems of the country.

Julian Lewis: Is it not a sign of the time and of the truth of the case that my right hon. Friend is making that these days, when one wants to find out what is going on in No. 10 Downing street, one does not look at the leaks to the political correspondents in the national press, but one looks for the exclusive stories that seem to come up in  PRWeek? Does that not say it all? It is all in the public relations sphere now, not in the political correspondents' sphere.

Francis Maude: My hon. Friend is right. It makes one smile when one hears the Prime Minister criticising us for slick salesmanship. There is a certain amount of envy, I think, when he says that, because the salesmanship from him has not yet reached that pinnacle. No doubt with all those advisers coming in, it will. That indicates the direction in which the Government are going under the new Prime Minister. There is more emphasis on spin than there was before.

Robert Syms: My right hon. Friend set out some of the people working in Downing street. No doubt some have appropriate jobs and some do not. Does he consider that it would be better if, at the beginning of a Parliament, Parliament approved whether those people should be working so that we could assess whether that was value for money?

Francis Maude: It would be useful to have a little more scrutiny. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) said, one learns about the appointments only by careful perusal of  PRWeek.
	That brings me to the next point, which is the way in which the civil service currently operates. As I said, its morale is at an all-time low. Its independence has been sapped. We see a series of terrible disasters, with people's personal data being lost, the result of a civil service relentlessly exploited by Ministers for partisan advantage, at the cost of focus on the basics of good, sound administration. We see the failure to legislate, despite all the promises, to put the civil service on a proper legal basis. Despite the publication four years ago of a draft Civil Service Bill, we are now told that no legislation is likely until next year.
	The independence of the civil service is one of the jewels in our constitutional crown. Civil servants' advice should always be sought. Everything that one hears about the way the Government operate suggests that frequently it is not sought, in case Ministers hear something that they do not like. It should always be sought, even when challenging. It should be respected, even when it is not taken. However, that, of course, would require Ministers who had a real sense of direction and purpose and who were competent and capable. At this stage, I can do no better than quote the hon. Member for Dagenham (Jon Cruddas), who said:
	Our people are abandoning us, we're sinking fast and no amount of hand-wringing and promises of 'listening and learning' will change that.
	The Government are now rotten and directionless, led by a losing Prime Minister, and they have lost their authority to govern. The sooner the Prime Minister summons up the bottle to call an election, the sooner the public will get the chance to vote for the change that they so earnestly seek and so richly deserve.

Edward Miliband: I beg to move, To leave out from House to the end of the Question, and to add instead thereof:
	commends the Government's measures to protect the impartiality of the Civil Service, in particular through its decision to legislate for the core principles and values of the Civil Service; believes that this decision builds on previous improvements, including an enhanced role for the Civil Service Commissioners, the publication of a code of conduct for special advisers and an updated code of conduct for civil servants; welcomes the improvements in efficiency of the Civil Service, which have allowed its size to be reduced in line with the Gershon recommendations; further welcomes the Government's continuing commitment to effective public information campaigns; supports the other steps to strengthen the accountability of government, including a new Ministerial Code and a new independent adviser on Ministerial interests, as well as pre-appointment hearings for key public appointments; and believes that all these measures contribute to a more efficient, transparent, accountable and effective government to better serve the people of this country.
	The speech made by the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) has left me somewhat speechless. I want to put this in the kindest terms, but he has been shadow Chancellor, shadow Foreign Secretary and chairman of his party; one is tempted to ask, Has it really come to this? He and his party want to try to make this House a more serious place, yet he has come here and brought out a few recycled press cuttings that have very little to do with the debate. I hoped that he would talk about the civil service legislation that we are planning in the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, and give us some suggestions about how the Bill might change. If he wants to raise the standard of debate in this country and the House, he will have to do better than he just did.
	The first extraordinary thing about the right hon. Gentleman's speech is that he seems to be unbriefed about the central fact underlying this debatethat is, that we are legislating for a civil service Bill as part of the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill.

Francis Maude: The Government are not legislating.

Edward Miliband: The right hon. Gentleman says that we are not legislating, but pre-legislative scrutiny of the Bill is beginning.

Francis Maude: It was a draft Bill four years ago.

Edward Miliband: It has been 155 years since the Northcote-Trevelyan report; and the right hon. Gentleman was part of the Government who had 18 years to legislate for a civil service Bill. If he had known that we were legislating for a such a Bill, he would have been the first to criticise us if we had not allowed proper scrutiny.
	I am looking forward to the contribution of my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), the Chairman of the Public Administration Select Committee, and I am pleased to see him in his place. I am also looking forward to the contribution of the hon. Member for Chichester (Mr. Tyrie), who is a former special adviser and thinks deeply about these matterswhich is more than can be said for my opposite number.
	The context for this debate is that we recognise that Parliament needs more power to hold the Executive to account. That is why we are legislating to limit the royal prerogative on war powers, treaties, the role of Ministers in appointments and the management of the civil serviceas I say, an act first promised 155 years ago. That is why we are opening up public appointments, including nominees for the chair of the Statistics Board and other important public appointments, to scrutiny by the House. That is why, for the first time, we legislated for the Freedom of Information Act 2000 and why we are establishing the UK Statistics Authority, which is independent of the Government.

Ian Liddell-Grainger: I am a member of the Public Administration Committee under the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). One of the intensely frustrating things during my six and a half years in Parliament has been that we had to write our own civil service Bill, which was drawn up with the advice of a lot of former Cabinet Secretaries. Does the Minister agree that that Bill is in principle the right way to go? Will he incorporate a lot of that Bill into the legislation? It is a good Bill and will protect the civil service for the next 150 years.

Edward Miliband: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention. I am sorry that I missed him when I was discussing the Bill with the Public Administration Committee last week; he was no doubt elsewhere. He will be pleased to know that we have published a draft Bill, which is going into pre-legislative scrutiny. I will be interested in his comments and those of hon. Members throughout the House. In reply to a question put by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase, I said that we wanted to invite comments on the Bill. We are open to suggestions about ways in which it can be improved.
	I had hoped that we could have a constructive debate today, and that is why it is so disappointing that the right hon. Member for Horsham came forward with a bunch of recycled allegations. He complained about Government information campaigns and their cost. Let me tell him what the three most expensive Government advertising campaigns were on: road safety, Army and Territorial Army recruitment, and anti-smoking. Is he seriously suggesting that he would cut any of those? I assume that he would not. His motion calls for a stronger ministerial code; we have just introduced one with a new independent adviser on ministerial interests. I have to bring him up to date on that as well.
	Instead of carping from the sidelines, the Opposition should engage seriously in the opportunity to legislate for the impartiality of the civil service. That is precisely what we are doing.

Chris Bryant: The Minister will know that Short money, which has increased dramatically since Labour came to power in 1997, is spent on employing an awful lot of people, who to all intents and purposes are special advisers for Her Majesty's loyal Opposition. Does my right hon. Friend think that they should be ruled by a code of conduct, as Government special advisers are?

Edward Miliband: My hon. Friend has made an important point. In an act of generosity, the Government have significantly increased the money that goes to the Opposition as Short money. As I understand it, there is no accounting for that money and how it is spent. That issue is certainly worth considering.
	I turn now to the substance of the Bill and civil service impartiality. It is important, and I am interested in Members' views on this. During the sitting of the Public Administration Committee that I attended last week, the Cabinet Secretary said:
	the challenge for Parliament is to...keep it very focused and allow the civil service the flexibility to meet what will be the challenges
	of the future. We have drafted the Bill with such considerations in mind.
	The Bill establishes that Parliament, not the royal prerogative, provides the basis for the work of the civil service. That is an important change; currently, the civil service is governed by the use of that prerogative. The Bill guarantees recruitment to the civil service on merit through fair and open competition, with the independent civil service commission upholding the process through its recruitment principles. The Bill will also incorporate the rule, set out for the first time in June 2006 in the new civil service code, that the civil service commissioners can take a complaint or concern directly from a civil servant about an issue under the code. The Bill strengthens transparency: it requires a code of conduct for the civil service to be published and laid before both Houses of Parliament.

Andrew Tyrie: In retrospect, does the Minister think it was a mistake for the incoming Labour Government to give special advisers authority over civil servants through an Order in Council?

Edward Miliband: Yes, and that is why we repealed it. The first act of the new Prime Minister was to repeal that Order in Council. I agree with the hon. Gentleman.
	The right hon. Member for Horsham referred to special advisers, and that brings me to my next point. I should declare an interest, because I am a former special adviser. However, it is not a small club.

Chris Bryant: There is one over there.

Edward Miliband: There is not only one; by my count, 20 Conservative Members are former special advisers.

Charles Walker: Shame!

Edward Miliband: Indeed, there are more former special advisers who are Conservative MPs than there are women Conservative MPs. No doubt the party will try to make amends for that at the next general election, but we shall do all we can to stop it.
	What is interesting about the old system governing special advisers is that there was no code of conduct, no transparency and no annual statement about their numbers, costs or work.

Andrew Tyrie: First, there was full transparency in the role of advisers, and, secondly, the decision by the Labour Government to start issuing such details was squeezed out of them only after I and a number of others had pressed them vigorously for several years, and the then Prime Minister, Tony Blair, finally agreed to provide some of the basic information being demanded.

Edward Miliband: It cannot be the case both that this information was always provided and that it arose only after several years of pressing by the hon. Gentleman. I pay tribute to him for pressing us to provide the information, and I take credit for the fact that we are doing so.
	The nub of the issue is this: do 70 or so special advisers in government overwhelm the work of 500,000 civil servants across Britain? In this regard I rely on, among others, Lord Wilson, the former Cabinet Secretary, who said in his evidence to the Committee on Standards in Public Life:
	I do not think the senior civil service of 3,700 people is in danger of being swamped by 70 special advisers. That is not what is happening and I do not see it as a creeping politicization.

Julian Lewis: Given that large numbers of civil servants are supposed to be told what to do by very small numbers of Ministers, a simple comparison between the number of special advisers and the number of civil servants does not take us very far. What matters is the amount of influence that those special advisers have. Will the Minister accept the factand it is a factthat during the final years of the Conservative Administration most Ministries had only two special advisers; a few of the lesser Ministries, if I dare describe them in that way, had only one; and only one Ministry, namely the Treasury, had three? How does that compare with the current situation?

Edward Miliband: The current norm is that most Cabinet Ministers, including me, have two special advisers. I do not think that that is an excessive number, but we can probably debate that.
	Another important aspect of this debate is that special advisers are not a threat to the impartiality of the civil servicein fact, they help to protect its impartiality because they can do political things that it would not be right for civil servants to do. That is why the Cabinet Secretary said at the Public Administration Committee last week
	this point about good special advisers being good for the civil service is really important.
	I say to the House, in all genuineness, that on special advisers and on other aspects of the Bill, we look forward to detailed scrutiny by this House, and even perhaps to some constructive suggestions.

Ian Liddell-Grainger: rose

Edward Miliband: Perhaps a constructive suggestion is coming.

Madam Deputy Speaker: I call Hugo Swire.

Ian Liddell-Grainger: He might be Ian Liddell-Grainger in his spare time, Madam Deputy Speaker.  [ Interruption. ]

Madam Deputy Speaker: Order. Could we have debate conducted in the usual manner?

Ian Liddell-Grainger: I am sorry for that flippancy, Madam Deputy Speaker.
	Does the Minister agree that the time has come to put the Prime Minister's office on a statutory footing as well, because many of the people we are talking about come under the Prime Minister's direct auspices? At the moment, the Cabinet Office is just a function of government where people come and go more frequently than in any other Department. Has not the time come to ensure that we understand exactly how that part works?

Edward Miliband: I think that we do understand how it works. I am not sure what putting it on a statutory footing would mean. The hon. Gentleman may be proposing a Prime Minister's Department; I do not think that that would be the right thing to do.
	Let me deal with some of the other allegations made by the right hon. Member for Horsham. He has this figure of 3,000 spin doctors in Whitehall, which he trots out every so often when he has nothing better to do. The true number of press officers is less than a fifth of that number. The rest, listed in what has become the infamous White Book, include those providing information to the public through publications, websites and campaigns to do with issues such as road safety, public health and smoking.
	The right hon. Gentleman did not raise the issue of quangos, which was sensible of him, becauseI do not want to rub salt into the woundafter he lost his seat in 1992 he was appointed to a quango in 1994 [ Interruption. ] Unpaid, he says. Presumably, if he is worried about the accountability of quangos, he was worried about his own appointment. However, it will interest him to know that there are fewer quangos than there were in 1997.
	I was disappointed by the right hon. Gentleman's failure to talk about what we are doing as regards the civil service Bill and other aspects of constitutional reform. The other disappointing aspect of his remarks was that he seemed to subscribe to what I would call a golden age view of the civil service. His remarks implied that we need only preserve the civil service in aspicsomewhere around the 1960s or 1970s, I guessand all will be okay. I must be honest with him about this. I do not hold to that view, not because I think we should breach the impartiality of the civil servicequite the opposite; that is why we are legislating for an impartial civil servicebut because the challenges faced by a modern Government and civil service are enormous, and that is why the civil service needs to evolve.

Kelvin Hopkins: rose

Edward Miliband: I give way to another distinguished member of the Public Administration Committee.

Kelvin Hopkins: My right hon. Friendother Ministers do the samereferred to the past as if it is wrong because it is the past. Some things from the past were good, if not perfect. We should not dispense with things that were valuable in the past and might be useful today.

Edward Miliband: I agree with my hon. Friend to a certain extent.
	Let me try to illustrate what I mean by the golden age-ism to which I referred; I am certainly not accusing my hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) of that. Hayden Phillips, a former permanent secretary, has written about how, as a junior civil servant in the Home Office in the 1960s, he was told by his division head not to visit a police force to discuss policy as
	it will prevent you from being properly detached.
	In a way, that illustrates one of the challenges for the civil service, which is to have greater awareness of delivery. A 2004 survey found that 60 per cent. of senior civil servants described their background as policy making, compared with just 25 per cent. in delivery. The current Cabinet Secretary, Gus O'Donnell, is trying to put more of an emphasis on delivery among senior, and indeed junior, civil servants so that they do not spend time just on policy in Whitehall but go out to see what is happening on the ground. That is incredibly important. The first challenge that the civil service needs to rise to is that of civil servants having experience of delivery.
	The second challenge is to do more to reflect the face of Britain. There has been progress in recent years on the number of women and ethnic minorities in the civil service, but it is still not good enoughthe numbers are still too low. The proportion of senior civil servants who are from minority ethnic backgrounds has doubled since 1997, but it is still too low. The proportion of women has doubled, but it is still too low. I gather that the proportion of new permanent secretaries who went to state schools has doubled, but that is probably still too low as well. Labour Members think that there is further to go and that this is an important challenge for the civil service if it is to recruit the most talented, regardless of background.

Robert Syms: I have always been amazed by the French system, where sometimes quite senior fast-track civil servants go into business, then back into the civil service, and then back out into business again. Does the Minister think that there is an argument for more flexibility in our system to provide broader experience of the real world?

Edward Miliband: I completely agree with the hon. Gentleman, who makes an important point. That should apply not only to business but to the voluntary sectorthe third sector. I am struck by the number of civil servants who work with me and my hon. Friend the hon. Member for Corby (Phil Hope), who is the Minister for the Third Sector, with backgrounds not just in government. Some of them come from the Big Lottery Fund, some from the third sector itself, and some have experience in the private sector. All that contributes to a more dynamic and innovative civil service.

Kelvin Hopkins: The French situation, in which civil servants who see themselves as part of the state go into business, get some experience and come back to serve the state better, is very different from one in which people whose basic loyalty is to business come to the state sector to help business to make more money. That is much more like the situation in Britain, particularly under the recent Blair Government.

Edward Miliband: I am trying to work out whether I agree with my hon. Friend.

Chris Bryant: You don't.

Edward Miliband: I am told that I do not agree with himI am sorry.
	If we are to have people in government who are making policy for business or for the voluntary sector, it is important for them to have experience of what it is really like to run a business or to be in the voluntary sector. There are many different ways in which that can be done. Senior civil servants can spend more time on the ground, gaining direct experience of different organisations, or people may come into the civil service with knowledge of those sectors.

Chris Bryant: One of the reasons there is great value in bringing private and voluntary sector people into the civil service, and in giving civil servants an opportunity to go out and come back in, is that the private and voluntary sectors tend to move much faster. They can be much more responsive to local conditions and situations and not so hidebound in their approach. Sometimes I feel that civil servants, as much as they might want to be helpful, can put roadblocks in the way of progress.

Edward Miliband: I could never possibly suggest that, but I take my hon. Friend's point. Innovation and an ability to take risks are the big challenges facing the civil service. I borrow something once said by the leader of the Conservative party about an end to Punch and Judy politics. If we are honest, part of the barrier to civil servants, Ministers and others taking risks is the sort of political and media climate in which we live. That is not to blame the media, but we need a more risk-taking culture throughout the public sector. Some things will go wrong as a result, but we would have more innovation and more things that went right and we would make a real difference to people's lives. I do not have a holy grail solution to that problem, but it is a challenge for all of us.
	We have further to go. There is an important challenge for the civil service, if it is to recruit the most talented regardless of background. We have set up board-level diversity champions throughout Whitehall to help to make that happen, and put in place a number of other measures to encourage diversity.
	My third point about civil service reform and making the service more open is the idea, already referred to, of outsiders coming in. I am not romanticising that idea or saying that everyone who comes from the private sector or elsewhere will be better than current permanent civil servantsabsolutely notbut it is a healthy thing that the proportion of the senior civil service recruited from outside has increased by a quarter over the past four years, from 18 to 23 per cent. That is one of the three big challenges for the civil service.
	I pay tribute to the Cabinet Secretary, who has launched, in the face of some natural scepticism, capability reviews looking at the capabilities of Departments. I see that the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) is raising his eyebrows. It is right to introduce those reviews because they will help to improve the quality of administration in our country. The process will always give ammunition for an irresponsible Opposition, but that is just one of those things. It is the right thing to do and it will improve the quality of policy making in this country.
	I have tried to describe our approach to the issues. We want to embed an impartial civil service. Our approach is part of a continuing programme of constitutional reform andnotwithstanding the remarks made by the right hon. Member for Horshamthis Government, under the current Prime Minister, have a lot to be proud of with regard to what we are doing on constitutional renewal. The Constitutional Renewal Bill will make a difference to the way we are governed. For example, the innovation of pre-appointment scrutiny is a major departure for this House. A significant number of public appointmentsI am in discussion with the Liaison Committee about the precise numberwhere a Minister decides on an individual will go before a Select Committee before they are confirmed so that testimony can be given, and the House will be able to report on that process. I hope that the House will use that responsibility wisely, because it is a big departure for our system of government to have the Executive held to account in this way, but it is the right thing to do. Many of the people we are talking about, from the Information Commissioner to the commissioner for public appointments play a significant role in holding the Executive to account on a whole range of appointments and in acting on behalf of the public.
	We have a good programme of constitutional reform, but we do not want to preserve the civil service in aspic. It needs to evolve on the bedrock of impartiality. I end by saying to the right hon. Member for Horsham that, despite his speech, I hope he will engage seriously with our programme of constitutional renewal, including the civil service Bill. I say with all sincerity that we will take any constructive suggestions from him or his colleagues on how that Bill can be improved. We will continue to modernise and strengthen the civil service so that it can meet the priorities of the people of this country.

Susan Kramer: I have to admit to a surreal moment: when the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) was speaking, I wondered whether I was in the right debate on the right day.
	We are willing to support the motion because at its heart is a further urging of the Government to introduce a civil service Bill that will enshrine in statute the impartiality of the civil service. It is obviously not a subject that has set the House on fire, as we can see from the attendance today. I suspect, however, that is not because of a lack of interest in the topic, but because the issue has been ongoing for so long that resilience concerning the hope of a civil service Bill has been worn down by repeated false pregnancies. All three major parties included a promise of a civil service Bill in their 1997 manifestos. Extensive discussions took place in 2001 and 2002, and there were two forms of draft Bill in 2004. There is great hope that we will finally see a Bill next year, but I hope that we shall hear some conviction on the part of the Minister for the Cabinet Office, and that there will not be a rerun of our experiences.
	I do not think that it really takes seven years to draft appropriate language for a civil service Bill. Call me a cynic, but it seems to me that it was most convenient for the previous Prime Minister, Tony Blair, not to have that sort of legislation on the statute book, so the issue drifted through discussion and consultation without getting anywhere. I believe that the willingness to introduce legislation now is meant to be part of the Brown fightbackbut I am not fussy. If we can get decent legislation, I do not care what the motive for it is. It is just important that we get good-quality legislation to enshrine and protect the civil service, and to make sure that it remains respected and effective in the future. However we get that, I will be pleased.
	I have to say, however, that it must be a good Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), when looking at the early drafts, used the phrase nibbling at the edges. There is an awful lot of work left to do on the Bill, and I congratulate the Public Administration Committee on taking on much of the challenge of scrutinising, questioning, monitoring and improving the quality of what we hope will be legislation in the not-too-distant future. We are left with a number of questions, which the House would like the Secretary of State to answer. I am struggling to understand why the Civil Service Commission should not be appointed and removable by Parliament, instead of being appointed by the Government. I believe that the Public Administration Committee has made a similar recommendation, and such a change would be the best guarantor of political neutrality. It would also be significant in stemming the constant tipping away of power from Parliament to Government. It would be an important step towards an appropriate rebalance.
	There are all sorts of lesser questions. Why should the commission not be able to initiate its own inquiries into breaches of the code of conduct? It strikes me as most peculiar that one should need the Government's permission to undertake an investigation of the Government. The issue of recruitment on the basis of merit was mentioned. That is obviously crucial, but should not the same standards apply to promotion or movement within the civil service? It is beyond me why that was not included. We heard quite a discussion on the issue of seconded staff a few moments ago, and on the various ways in which such secondment takes place.
	I think that the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) touched on the general issue, especially with short-term secondments, of what mechanisms are in place to ensure that the public service ethos remains dominant when people are brought in from a business culture, which is very different. I am not saying that one cannot learn from the other, or that exchange is not beneficial. However, on 10 November 2005, Lord Butler of Brockwell told the Public Administration Committee that that sort of transfer of people
	needs to be accompanied by safeguards
	against business ethics damaging civil service ethics. I have yet to perceive that sort of understanding in the draft legislation.

Kelvin Hopkins: The hon. Lady mentioned ethics. I would not call myself a Platonist, but I refer to Plato from time to time. He clearly perceived a hierarchy of ethics, from those in government to those in the civil service to those in business. Does she agree that the ethics of public service should be seen to be above those of business, even though they can learn from each other?

Susan Kramer: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his intervention, but I do not subscribe to the notion that one is a scumbag if one has spent one's life in business, and a wunderkind if one has done so in public service. However, having been part of both worlds, I am conscious of the differences in culture. It is not necessarily an easy transition from one to the other. I believe that the business community can be tempted to perceive the process of secondment not as a strategy to help public service perform better but as an easier route to influencing and shaping. That might apply not to the individuals but to the companies from which they are seconded. I do not claim that that necessarily happens, but we should consider the possibility when we manage the process.
	Earlier, I mentioned promotion and movement in the civil service through merit and open competition. I struggle to understand why that should not form the basis of every appointment that is not of a special adviser, instead of excluding several posts. I hope that the Minister for the Cabinet Office will tackle that. Seventy is the figure that constantly floats around for the number of special advisers. That venerable journal  PRWeek, which has dominated the debate, reported on 24 April that hordes of senior Labour special advisers were said to be passing their CVs to head-hunters and recruitment consultants amid concern that their stock was falling. Perhaps the number will fall below 70. However, that number of people, with a great deal of influence and power, can have an impact on the behaviour of several thousand. It is silly to suggest that 70 people cannot overwhelm the civil service.
	What limit should we set? Why is not there a cap or some negotiated mechanism for limiting the number? If 70 is fine, is 700 fine, or is that ridiculous? Should the number be 100? Whatever it should be, having some sort of cap would give Parliament and the public confidence that special advisers were used on an as needed basis to execute the Government's mission, and were limited to such roles.
	Although the Minister for the Cabinet Office implied that special advisers had no line management responsibility, the draft Bill does not specify that. It would therefore be good to include the prohibition of line management on the face of the Bill. Of course special advisers can commission work, and many people perceive that, if it is misused, as a form of line management. I fully accept that the Government do not intend to include a provision to repeat the Order in Council that enabled Alastair Campbell and Jonathan Powell to be appointed with special executive powers. However, taking that a stage further to ensure that there is no loophole for commissioning to spill over would be useful.
	So far, I have considered the civil service largely in the abstract. However, those of us who have been involved in the battle over Heathrow are worried about the creeping loss of neutrality in the civil service. The hon. Member for Putney (Justine Greening), through her diligent pursuit of freedom of information requests, has exposed an incredible amount of integration and co-operation between BAA and the Department for Transport in presenting what is supposedly an impartial consultation to the people of south-west London on an issue about which people care enormously. There is a genuine sense that, in its determination to pursue a Government objective, the civil service suspended its independent judgment and allowed itself to be overridden by BAA's preferences and biases.
	Some hon. Members will remember that in 2002, my hon. Friend the Member for Northavon (Steve Webb) requested information from the Government about disabled people in hospital, and was told that it was unavailable. Through the Data Protection Act 1998, he obtained a draft answer, which made it clear that the information was available and that he had been given an incorrect response. The Government apologised to the Speaker and to my hon. Friend for that, but the House and the Public Administration Committee had to pursue them before that could be achieved. Frankly, hon. Members will not go through that sort of exercise. We must ensure that the responsiveness is there from the beginning.
	To speak personally and poignantly, I lost several acquaintances on 11 September 2001and I will never get beyond the behaviour of special adviser Jo Moore, who said:
	It's now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.
	That conveys a genuine warning, which underscores the importance of getting the Bill right. Jo Moore was in a running battle with the civil service elements of the press office in her Department, in an arena where one would have thought that such a clash of values should never occur.
	The Conservatives do not get off lightly. For all their claims that there was a golden age under a Conservative Government, the Thatcher era sowed the seeds. On 24 May 2007, Lord Lipsey, a widely respected Labour peer, who spent many years in the civil service said:
	The present generation of civil servants grew up in the Thatcher years, when the question, 'Is he one of us?' resounded around Whitehall, and giving your opinion fully and frankly could be a barrier to advancement.[ Official Report, House of Lords, 24 May 2007; Vol. 692, c. 772.]
	In many ways, Blair and Campbell were the true heirs of Thatcher and Ingham.
	I was only on the sidelines of politics at the time, but many of us remember Jeremy Paxman's questioning of the right hon. and learned Member for Folkestone and Hythe (Mr. Howard), when he was Home Secretary, about whether he had improperly overruled Derek Lewis, the director general of the Prison Service. There is, therefore, no clean slate.
	The motion refers to quangos, and although I personally agree with its language, it took me aback for a moment, because when it comes to the pot calling the kettle black, the Tory policy of establishing an NHS boardthe mother of all quangosto be responsible for commissioning NHS services, allocating NHS resources and delivering objectives to improve outcomes for patients, is extraordinary. I therefore hope that the language in the motion will be incorporated over into Tory policy.
	A call for senior appointments to quangos to be subject to scrutiny by the relevant Commons Select Committee is missing from the motion and the draft Bill. That is an especially important element to returning to parliamentary control and giving the public confidence in the impartiality and objectivity of the services that are delivered to them.
	Some people think that our focus on the impartiality of the civil service is a little piece of nonsense. Indeed, there is envy of the US system, which is openly politicised and where the winner takes the spoils, as it were. However, having lived for many years in the United States, I think that those people have completely missed the checks and balances that are an inherent part of the US system between the judiciary, the Executive and the legislature, which mean that an entirely different set of issues are confronted. In our parliamentary system, not having the impartiality of the civil service carefully enshrined in law would totally upset the balance of power. If we ever wanted to guarantee the potential for a presidential Prime Minister, that would do it.
	Let me close by saying that it is about time that the Northcote-Trevelyan report of 1854, which established the principle of a permanent, independent and politically neutral civil service, found its way on to the statute book. More than 150 years is probably a long enough gestation period for any piece of legislation.

Tony Wright: When I saw the motion, I thought how extraordinary it was. I have seen some motions here over the years, but in terms of being a dog's dinner, this is one is quite distinctive. Then I heard the speech that the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) made, and to the dog's dinner was added a dog's breakfast. We are in a fantasy land in this debate, where the only thing that the Government are not being blamed for is the fact that it rained on bank holiday Monday. I therefore hope that I shall not do the Opposition a disservice by saying that I want to take some aspects of the debate seriously.
	I like the references to the Northcote-Trevelyan report, because they give me a chance to quote it again. If ever there was a model of a Government report, it was that report of 1854, by Stafford Northcote and Charles Trevelyan. It is a splendid report in a number of ways. It has only 22 pages and is written in crisp, clear English: what a model for us to return to in today's White Papers and similar documents. The report says some wonderful things and describes the civil service in its unreformed condition. I am afraid that the following quotation is irresistible, which is why I am unable to resist quoting it:
	Admission into the Civil Service is indeed eagerly sought after, but it is for the unambitious, and the indolent or incapable, that it is chiefly desired. Those whose abilities do not warrant an expectation that they will succeed in the open professions, where they must encounter the competition of their contemporaries, and those whom indolence of temperament, or physical infirmities unfit for active exertions, are placed in the Civil Service, where they may obtain an honourable livelihood with little labour, and with no risk; where their success depends upon their simply avoiding any flagrant misconduct, and attending with moderate regularity to routine duties; and in which they are secured against the ordinary consequences of old age, or failing health, by an arrangement which provides them with the means of supporting themselves after they have become incapacitated.
	Hon. Members can see why I described that quotation as irresistible, but it is also a reminder of how reforming the civil service formed a part of that great reforming movement in the 19th century. The great Peter Hennessy has talked about
	the greatest single governing gift of the nineteenth to the twentieth century: a politically disinterested and permanent Civil Service with core values of integrity, propriety, objectivity and appointment on merit, able to transfer its loyalty and expertise from one elected government to the next
	and so it was.
	The civil service was reformed for two reasons. One was that it was inefficientwe should not forget that the drive to make the state service more efficient was at the heart of the Northcote-Trevelyan agendaand the other was that it was corrupt and run by patronage. Those twin objectives of rooting out corruption and making the civil service more effective have always been the twin drivers for reform of the service, and so they should remain.
	There are two truisms about the way in which the civil service is usually discussed these days. One is that Oppositions always say that the civil service is being corrupted by the Government of the day. One can go back over the years and find source after source showing that. The second truism is that Governments of the day, particularly those of a radical and reforming disposition, express a certain amount of dissatisfaction with the civil service's ability to perform as they want it to.
	In the modern period, the issue was perhaps first discussed by the Treasury and Civil Service Committee, as it then was, under the previous Conservative Government. The Committee produced a report in 1994 arguing the case for civil service legislation, but also saidthis is relevant to the repeated arguments about politicisationthat the
	election of a fourth successive Conservative Government has given rise to concern about whether prolonged rule by one party might call into question the preservation of a politically impartial civil service.
	Those of us who remember that period, to which the hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) referred, will remember that the arguments of the day were entirely about whether the Thatcherite one of us culture was corrupting the essential independence and impartiality of the civil service. The arrival of Mrs. Thatcher saw the retirement of a raft of permanent secretaries, who were replaced by people who were thought to be one of us. Because that Government were in power for a long time, the assumption was that if someone wanted to progress inside the service, being one of us was a considerable advantage. Some of that criticism was unfair, but it reflected the aspirations of a Government to make the civil service work better than it had done.

Julian Lewis: I am not expert in this field, but I am a little surprised that the hon. Gentleman seems to be suggesting that people who reached the top posts in their Department as permanent under-secretaries were appointed on the basis of a partisan belief that they were one of us. In order even to have been contenders for the top post, they would surely have had to have had distinguished careers in the civil service, to get the second level.

Tony Wright: To support what I am saying, let me simply quote one history of the civil service, which says:
	The Whitehall grapevine had it that the vital question being asked about the potential appointees was 'Is he one of us?'. This was taken to imply a commitment to the can-do ethos of Thatcherism rather than any obvious affiliation to the Conservative Party.
	That is quite fairly put and reflects the approach of a radical and reforming Administration.

Julian Lewis: The hon. Gentleman is being generous in giving way again. With respect, even that quotation does not sound like a description of party political partisanship, but a description of an attitude of mind, based on whether someone is a proactive or a reactive person. The hon. Gentleman will have to make a stronger case to suggest that we are talking about party political politicisation, in the context of such high appointments to the professional ranks of the civil service.

Tony Wright: I tried to put the matter as fairly as I could, rather than in a partisan way. I was trying to explain that there has been a standing temptation on the part of Governments who feel a desire to shake up the system to get people in place who will enable them to do so. That was true of the Thatcher period and it was true of the Blair period, too. It is interesting that similar charges were levied in each period about the consequences of that. If we scrape away those charges and go beyond the political exchanges in those periods, the question is: was something happening to make the civil service politicised? Are politicians behaving in relation to the civil service in ways that are improper and disturbing its tradition of neutrality, independence and impartiality?

Kelvin Hopkins: I want to follow up on the two interventions made by the hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis). During the Thatcher era, there was a serious philosophical, ideological change; was it not possible for someone in government to determine which side of that ideological divide a civil servant might reside? Could not they make sure, with a wink and a nod, that people on the Thatcherite side of that divide would be promoted and that those who had lingering attachments to social democracy would be marginalised?

Tony Wright: That is an interesting observation. I was trying to argue that although such charges are made for political reasons in each period of government, they do not stand up when tested against the question whether the character of the civil service is being fundamentally altered by what is happening.
	The Select Committee on Public Administration, which I have the honour to chair, considered this issue in some detail just a year ago. We produced a report called Politics and Administration: Ministers and Civil Servants, which examined the politicisation charges made over the years. It is worth quoting a paragraph that sums up the evidence that we received. We said that:
	despite the regular accusations of politicisation, Britain clearly remains singularly unpoliticised. External appointments to the senior civil service are regulated by the Civil Service Commissioners, and no witnesses suggested ministers were able to exercise significant powers of patronage. Although ministers are able to make political appointments to special adviser posts, there was broad agreement that the scale of political appointments was so small, in relation to the size of the civil service, that it did not undermine principles set out by the 1854 Northcote Trevelyan Report and, in significant respects, protected them. Moreover, in relation to appointments to public bodies, the role of ministers has actually been reduced by recent changes.
	That is an accurate summary, and shows why the general charge of politicisation, whether under Conservative or Labour Governments, simply is not sustainable.
	In any serious discussion on this issue, it is worth discussing the appropriate balance between the political element in government and the permanent element. It is worth having that discussion here and in any comparable political system, and there would be different answers for the different systems, all of which claim to uphold the principles of democratic politics. I remember being introduced to the Australian Cabinet Secretary, some years ago, and discovering that he was a political appointee. In Canadaanother Commonwealth countrythe permanent secretaries, whom they call deputy ministers, are all political appointees.
	What is the correct balance between the political and permanent bureaucratic elements of government? That question can be answered in a variety of ways, and is always open to dispute. Internationally, we are at an extreme end of that spectrum, with our small element of political appointment within government. Given the arguments about this issue that we have had in this country over the years, one would think that we were right at the other end of the spectrum. Extraordinary attention has been paid to the appointment of special advisers over the years, but there is minute political involvement in government here.
	To return to my comments about radical reforming Governments sometimes revisiting the issue, the case is sometimes made for changing the balance fundamentally. That argument was put forward by Sir John Hoskyns, who ran Mrs. Thatcher's policy unit for the first three years of her Conservative Government. He was an interesting manone of Mrs. Thatcher's business men and can-do people whom she brought in. He spent a year working out exactly how Britain was governed and what the problems were with that method, and put his findings in a diagram. When Mrs. Thatcher was shown the diagramshe was a chemist, as we knowshe said that it looked exactly like the plan of a chemical plant.
	John Hoskyns was impatient about the balance between the political and civil service elements, and wanted to change it. After he left that job, he said:
	If a country's problems require radical remedies, you need a radical government. But how can you have a radical government without radically-minded officials?
	He went on to say:
	We need to replace a large number of senior civil servants with politically appointed officials on contract, at proper market rates, so that experienced, top-quality people would be available.
	I did not give that quote simply to make a political point, to damn that political period or to revisit matters that provide a political opportunity. There is a perfectly proper argument to be had about the balance between the political element in government and the permanent civil service element. All political systems have that discussion, as we do. We allow exemptions to appointment on merit through secondments and short-term contracts, and we could have a grown-up discussion about such matters if we wanted to.
	In recommending a civil service Bill in 1854, Northcote and Trevelyan said in their report:
	a few clauses would accomplish all that is proposed
	They were right. My Committee has always taken the view that we do not want an over-elaborate Bill. We want one that is as simple as possible and that tries to set some of the constitutional boundary lines in statute. We want a move from a rule by prerogative to one of Parliament and statute. That is what we want to do, and it is has been quite a job getting such a Bill. It has been much promised, but not delivered, and we have been frustrated by that.
	In 2004, to mark the 150th anniversary of the Northcote-Trevelyan report, we published our own Bill. I think that it was the first time in modern parliamentary history that a Select Committee had published its own Bill to show what could be done. That approach has borne fruit, because the Government then produced a draft Bill and have now produced a serious proposal to legislate with the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill.
	There will be reasons to ask the Government to strengthen the Bill in a variety of waysthe hon. Member for Richmond Park helpfully mentioned some of them. I think that our Committee and the Joint Committee on the Constitutional Renewal Bill, which is going to consider the Bill, will say that the Government are on the right lines. Indeed, they are doing the right thing and are on the right lines.
	I shall end with one observation on the process. I have been considering this matter over the years to see why it has taken so long to get to this point. It is easy to attack previous Governments for inertia, but I particularly wanted to explore why the last Conservative Government decided not to legislate, despite the recommendation of the former Treasury and Civil Service Committee that they should. Discussions in that period show that the people inside the Government who were responsible for the matter were anxious, and for good reason. They did not want to disturb the essential constitutional position of the civil service and did not want to legislate in a way that would ossify the service. However, there was also a political consideration. They did not want to start down that path if it meant that the proposal simply became a matter for political dispute. It was thought that if the civil service were brought into the political arena and if agreement could not be reached, that would do more harm than good.
	David Hunt, now Lord Hunt, who was leading for the Conservative Government at the time, said, in evidence to the Treasury and Civil Service Committee on 14 June 1995:
	I would not want to start the process without a clear indication from all sectors of the House that in fact we would not see the civil service become a party political football in terms of the amendments being proposed and put forward.
	That was a very proper worry.
	Having discussed this issue with all kinds of people over the years, and having taken evidence from former senior civil servants and former Cabinet Secretaries, I have found that they all express the same worry: can we legislate on the civil service without it becoming an opportunity to have a political dispute about the civil service? If not, they felt that it would be better not to do anything at all. That is a profound consideration.
	Sometimes, we in this House like to say, between ourselves, that we think that this should be a matter for consensus. However, having watched the protestations of commitment to consensus over the years, I have to report that that breaks down at the first whiff of political opportunity. That is the way our system is; that is how we do it. If we see the opportunity to score a political goal or to make a political point, we take it, even if we are notionally committed to a consensus approach.
	This is a huge test for us. It is unfinished constitutional business. We all know that it needs to be done. We know that we would like to put the civil service into statute and to draw some constitutional lines in the sand. The question is whether we can collectively do that without it becoming a political football.
	The motion today refers, as such things always do, to restoring trust in the political system. Our record on that could make one quite pessimistic. The truth is that, for the past 15 years, we have had an auction on trust and distrust in this country. In a sense, we started it. We quickly realised that making allegations against the Major Government brought huge political dividends. If we look at the figures, we see that it was thenin the 1990sthat trust really started to go down, and it has never recovered since. We piled in making all kinds of allegations about the sleazy character of Conservative politicians; then, after 1997, the Conservatives decided that, in order to equalise the balance, they had to make similar charges against us. The effect has been to pull us all down. The reputation in which we are all held has declined immeasurably during that period. In the short term, such activity might seem like good politics, but I can assure the House that it is really bad for the reputation of public life in this country.
	The challenge for us now is to do something about that, but, as David Hunt said all those years ago, we can succeed only if there is genuine consensus in the House and determination on all sides to create a good, coherent civil service Bill that will last.

Peter Lilley: It is a great privilege to follow the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) in addressing these matters. He interestingly went back into history and paid tribute to the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms. In many ways that might be right, as far as the integrity of the civil service is concerned, but I would advise him to read a forthcoming work on the subject that puts a wholly different complexion on whether those reforms were beneficial for the efficiency of the civil service. It is written by a civil servanta gentleman called Mike Coolicanwho advised me when I was at the then Department of Social Security and, no doubt, my Labour successors in due course. I urge the hon. Gentleman to put that on his reading list.
	I should like to put the hon. Gentleman right on the impression that he might have createdeven though I do not think it was his intention to do sothat there was a degree of politicisation in the selection of permanent secretaries under the Thatcher Administration. That was not my experience. I remember when I first got my foot on the lowest rung of the ladder and became a Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Minister responsible for local governmentindeed, the Minister responsible for the abolition of Ken Livingstone, the Inner London Education Authority and all that sort of thing.
	The Bill to achieve those changes was introduced by the Government, and Mrs. Thatcher was very much in favour of it. It was a key centrepiece of the Government's Administration. The official in charge of it made it absolutely clear to Ministers that he thought that it was a barmy idea, that it was wrong in principle, and that it would be damaging in practice. None the less, it was his job as a civil servant to tell us how to achieve our aims in the least damaging and most effective way. As a result, he caught the attention of Ministers, who found him all the more effective because they knew that, rather than soft-soaping them, he was telling them how a bad Bill could be made less bad. He rapidly became permanent secretary, over the heads of his rivals in the then Department of the Environment. That was how it worked. Mrs. Thatcher liked people who answered back and who told her the truth. I suspect that there might be a difference between that attitude and those that pertain nowadays. There was certainly no party political import at that time.
	I congratulate my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) on raising this extremely important issue. The integrity of the civil service is a pearl of great price, and anyone who has lived or worked in a country that does not have an impartial civil service will recognise just how valuable it is. The possession of an information service within the civil service that is dedicated to honesty and integrity is also of immense importance to the operation of democracy. The accountability of Ministers to Parliament, and of civil servants to Ministers, is central to the working of parliamentary democracy.
	All those things are now under threator have been threatenedunder this new Labour Government. Even the fact that the Government are introducing this legislation is a recognition of the fact that there is grave concern about these issues, and that the Government are trying to respond to that, perhaps in good faith, and trying to reverse those things that have been put under threat over the past 10 years. This is unique to new Labour. Historically, the Labour party and Labour Governments have been respectful of the conventions and traditions that uphold the civil service and the integrity of its management.
	The other night, I was browsing through Roy Hattersley's admirable autobiography, Who Goes Home? in which he refers to his experience ahead of, I think, the 1979 election. He had discovered that the retail prices index figures, which were coming out a day after the election, were going to be very good. He said:
	So I asked the Prime Minister if I could announce, or at least leak, our success
	in getting down inflation
	on the eve of the poll. Jim could not have been more scandalised if I had confessed to doctoring the figures.
	So the attitude of that Labour Prime Minister, Jim Callaghan, was full of integrity and respect for the system. Callaghan in turn explained to Hattersley how a junior Minister called Dugdale, as a young Member of Parliament and Minister in the post-war Labour Government, had questioned Sir Stafford Cripps as to whether it was really necessary to announce a proposal to reduce the already inadequate cheese ration by a further 2 oz, just before a general election. Stafford Cripps replied that he was not sure of the questioner's identity, but
	whoever he was, if he allowed political considerations to influence his judgement, he was not fit to be one of Her Majesty's ministers.
	Thus there has been a tradition on both sides of the House to uphold the integrity of the processes of Government, and that is why we have retained an impartial civil service until recently.

Kelvin Hopkins: I thank the right hon. Gentleman, my political neighbour, for giving way. He is describing a situation that I remember from my youth; it could even be described as a golden age. Although things were not perfect then, are there not values and attitudes that were prevalent then that we could re-adopt and reinforce now?

Peter Lilley: I entirely agree.
	I want to ask why the new Labour Government have put so much pressure on these features of our civil service. The answer lies in the fact that new Labour is essentially old Labour that has ceased to believe in socialism, or indeed in anything. And those who believe in nothing are prepared to say anything. Those whose agenda is more about gaining power than implementing an idea focus essentially on headlines. That leads to a focus on spin and to initiativitis, which embroils the civil service in producing spurious policies that can be announced but never implemented. It also leads to conflict between Ministers and civil servants.
	Most people who watch Yes Minister assume that conflict between the civil service and Ministers is integral to the relationship between them. Traditionally, when asked whether Yes Minister is an accurate portrayal of relations, Ministers' response has been, You think it is a comedy; we know it is a documentary. Actually, it is a description of the relationship between civil servants and Ministers, focusing on an abrasive attempt by civil servants to get control of the agenda, only if the Minister has no agenda of his own. If a Minister has no agenda and is moved solely by a desire to respond to a bad headline yesterday or to avoid a bad headline tomorrow and get a good one the day after, he will be all over the place all the time, constantly driven by the newspapers. In that case, the civil service steps in. Thank heavens it does; it is better to have consistent government by some body of people who know something about it than inconsistent and incoherent government by a Minister who does not have a clue what he really wants.
	If Ministers come along with an agenda of their own, a clear idea of what they want to do, and put it to their officials, that is completely different. Even if those officials do not agree with that agenda personally because it goes against their own political views or they do not like it or are worried about it, once they have tested the Minister and noted the agenda that the elected ministerial representative wants to put forward, the British civil service will be second to none in helping to deliver it. Unfortunately, the obsession with spin and headlines rather than substance and a coherent agenda has put the Government in conflict with the information service, particularly with respect to the civil service. Within the first 12 months of the new Labour Government, we saw 24 of the 44 senior posts in the civil service changed and replaced largely by Government appointees or special advisers. That was extremely damaging and extremely unwise.

Julian Lewis: One point has not been brought out clearly enough. When the changeover came from special advisers who numbered a little over two dozen in the Thatcher years to the much larger number now, many of the new people were appointed precisely to the press officer posts that my right hon. Friend mentions. In the period before that, we should think not only about the numbers involved, but about what people did. They were advisers and confidants, but for the most part they were not press officers. The key change is not just that so many more of these posts now exist, but that so many more are charged on a day-to-day basis with trying to deal with the press. Does my right hon. Friend agree?

Peter Lilley: I agree very strongly with that. I would like to draw on my own experiencethe best way for me to contributerather than provide mere assertion on that and other issues.
	When I became Secretary of State for Social Security, I was told about all the skeletons in the cupboard. There was one particular skeletonI forget exactly what it was, but it was a difficult piece of information to handleand I was told, Minister, you are going to have to think about how to deal with this. I got up one morning to find that that piece of information was the headline in  The Guardian.
	It so happened that my first meeting was with my chief press officer, Stephen Reardon, the responsible official in the Department. I asked him how that newspaper had acquired that piece of information and he told me, I gave it to them. I will not repeat to the House exactly what I said, but I was intemperatewrongly intemperate, as I should not have been intemperate with a civil servant, but I was for a moment. When I asked him how he had come to do that, he replied that the newspaper had asked him a question to which that information was the answer. It was not confidential information, he told me, and he said: My job, Minister, is not to work for you, but for the public. My job is to tell the truth and to give to the public the information that is theirs by right, which cannot be withheld as confidential.
	When I had calmed down, I began to think that this man was rather valuable. He would stand up and tell the truth to all and sundry, including to me; I found him to be an invaluable civil servant throughout my period in office. If I asked him how a particular announcement would be seen by the media, he would give me an honest and accurate prescription. Within just a few weeks of the appointment of the new Labour Government, he was outhe lost his job; he was sackedbecause they could not put up with that sort of integrity. I think that they damaged themselves, as I believe that it strengthens the Government to have people who can be trusted to tell the truth and provide a reliable conduit of information between Departments and the media.
	Secondly, I want to deal with the importance of officials telling the truth directly to Ministers in confidence, helping them to speak truthfully when they are operating in Parliament and correcting errors if Ministers accidentally make them. From time to time, I am invited to speak at the civil service college at Henley and I talk about what Ministers want from officials. I talk about many things, but towards the end I include the point that when we Ministers make a mistake, it is the job of civil servants to present us with a little note saying, Minister, when you said there was no precedent for x, what you actually meant was that there were seven precedents, which are as follows. It can happen very occasionally; even I might say something in the heat of debate or without proper thought that turned out to be incorrect. In those circumstances, officials should present the Minister with a statement of the mistake and it would become the Minister's job to put the record straight immediately, usually in Committee, or perhaps later to the House.
	When I tell today's civil servants that that was and should be the practice, they look at me aghast and in amazement! They first ask how it would be possible for them to do that when all the time Ministers say things that are not true; and, secondly, they say that the attitude of the Government and Ministers is not the same any more. It is a very sad and sorry state of affairs when some officials seem to be too cowed to stand up to Ministers. A great many probably retain their robustness, which is essential to proper relations between them and Ministers.
	In my experience, it is important to have officials working for us even if they do not necessarily agree with all our policies. I carried out an analysis of where policy had, in my view, gone wrong in its formulation or implementation in the Department of Social Securityneedless to say, before I took over. I looked into the Child Support Agency. Part of the reason it had gone wrong was that everybody was in favour of it: officials, especially women, were in favour of it for feminist reasons; Ministers were in favour of it because it chimed well with dealing with feckless fathers; and no one on the committee preparing for the Bill was against it. No one said, Hang on a minute; will this work? Is it really so sensible? That is why I think it desirable to have officials who are robust enough to stand up and criticise Ministers or the policies that they are putting forward by suggesting that they should think again while a policy is going through a process of development. Civil servants need self-confidence and belief in their own integrity in order to do that.
	Thirdly, there is the issue of accountability. Officials are accountable to Ministers; Ministers are accountable to Parliament. It is difficult to get the balance right. We cannot expect Ministers to take responsibility for every little thing that happens in their Department. We cannot expect a Minister for Transport to resign whenever there is a car crash, even though it is his job to reduce their number. None the less, when something major happens in the Department, the first implication should be that the Minister is responsible rather than, as happens all too often nowadays, the naming, shaming and blaming of the civil servants.
	When I was Financial Secretary to the Treasury, I was responsible for the Inland Revenue. If it had been responsible for losing all the data of every family in the country, I would at least have tentatively offered my resignation to the Prime Minister or Chancellor. I may have hoped that it would be refused, but I would at least have put forward that resignation.  [Interruption.] I do not pretend to any great personal valour in these matters, but it is important for Ministers to accept that, at the end of the day, they are responsible and cannot escape blame by blaming officials.
	To give the Minister an example, I had to consider resigning on such grounds when I was dealing with the allegation that my predecessors had sanctioned the export of chemical weapons precursors and nuclear weapons precursors to Iraq. The only way to kill that allegation dead was to publish the details of every single export licence relating to Iraq in those categories in the years preceding the invasion of Kuwait by Saddam Hussein. It took a long time; there were thousands of licences. The officials eventually came back and said, All clear, Minister; not a single example. Only the export of two hunting guns were possibly against the sanctions regime. I then summoned in the members of the press one by one, and said to each of them, Look, there are the 14,000 export licences. You can read them yourself, but I can assure you that you will not find an example of anything out of line.
	After I had seen the last member of the press, and they had all gone away rather disappointed that this fox had been shot, a civil servant came to see me and said, I'm frightfully sorry, but one of the very first documents we looked at did actually contain reference to the export of some chemicals that at the time were not considered to be chemicals weapons precursors, but which were subsequently so designated by the United Nations. I asked, Are you sure that that is the only one? and they said, No; we will go and have a look. They then came back and said, Actually, there are five or six shipments, Minister. I said, Do you realise that although you think this is very amusing, I will have to take responsibility, and I will almost certainly be required to resign?
	As it happened, I wrote an open letter to the Chairman of the Select Committee, and everyone was on holiday, and the Press Association wrote the story up very favourably to me and I got away scot-free. However, Ministers are ultimately responsible for the advice they take, and if they take bad advice on a serious matter on which they have given serious assurances, their heads are on the block.
	Let me finally make some brief observations about the reforms that are needed. In response to the hon. Member for Cannock Chase, I referred to the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms. They entrenched in the British civil service a belief that generalism, not specialism, is the only way to the top, and in terms of promotion and internal recruitment and recruitment from outside, we need to bring in people with specialist experience. It is my experience in business that someone who knows a lot about repairing motor cars can be made into a good librarian, but someone who knows nothing about anything probably cannot be made into a good manager of anything. So specialist expertise is important. That went out of the civil service with the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms. Before then, the Indian civil service had at least required people to learn Indian languages, but as a result of those reforms Haileybury collegeit is nothing to do with the schoolwhere the civil servants were taught was closed down and thereafter they learned Greek and Latin in order to go off and govern India. We have suffered from that ethos ever since.
	More significant, in my experience, was the paucity of people in the civil service with project management experience and skills. That might explain why so many major projects go wrong: to get promotion in the civil service, staff should want to be a policy adviser, not a manager. Normally, staff in the civil service do a job for only a couple of years before moving on to something else, hopefully higher up and away from actually managing anything to advising Ministers. Therefore, very few people in the civil service have had any prolonged experience of managing anything through to completion. I raised that with the head of the civil service, and now there is at least some attempt to provide for the formation of project management skills, but I suspect that it does not go far enough.
	I congratulate my Front-Bench colleagues on introducing this motion, and on focusing on the importance of bringing back to the centre of our debate integrity, truth in information and accountability in terms of Ministers' policies and the actions of their Departments. Driven by the criticisms that have been made of their stewardship for the past 10 years, I hope that the Government will forge ahead and introduce a Bill that will entrench the integrity of the civil service; that should not be necessary, but alas, it is. I also hope that my Front-Bench colleagues will live up to what they are saying now when they are in government after May 2010.

Kelvin Hopkins: I welcome the opportunity to speak in this important debate on a subject that has interested me greatly for a long time, not least because I am privileged to be a member of the Public Administration Committee. That is the most enjoyable, interesting and worthwhile role I have had during my 11 years in this House. I am particularly pleased that the Committee is chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright). He is not merely a competent Chair but a brilliant one; he leads us superbly in the work we do. However, although I congratulate him on his speech, it must be said that we do from time to time have slight differences of view. That is healthy, however, and the civil service should be like that, too.
	First, I apologise for not being present for the speech from the Opposition Front Bencher as I was unavoidably detained. I will not be too critical of the motion, even though I shall, obviously, vote with the Government when we divide. I hope that what I say will reflect some of the Opposition's concernsI certainly think that that will be the case, as I shall be repeating comments I have made in the Committee on more than one occasion.
	It is some 150 years since the Northcote-Trevelyan report, so it is not before time that we are talking about putting some of their thoughts into legislation. I am pleased that the Committee put forward a draft civil service Bill, which was highly regarded by Members of all parties, although the previous Prime Minister and his Government were resistant to implementing it. I very much welcome the fact that our new Prime Minister has brought in a new era, one in which we are looking forward positively to a better future.
	My purpose in speaking in this debate is to say that we are moving in the right direction. I have had a number of private conversations with Ministers, and I have spoken publicly in the Committee, and I want to do what I can to give the Government a small shove to move further in the right direction.
	I should also say that I appreciate the speech of the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), who is a near constituency neighbour. I agree with almost everything he said. He emphasised that there should be a pervasive sense of honour in government in general, and that people were honourable in the past. We have, perhaps, forgotten that a little. This is not just a game of winning and losing; it is about principles, behaving well and setting examples to the rest of the world.
	Without being too high-flown, I should mention that I was recently interviewed for a television programme for the former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, and the programme makers wanted to know how to run a civil service. I have not been a civil servant and I do not know much, but I emphasised the points made today about civil servants having integrity, ability and a strong sense of public service to the state, and not being corrupted. They were very worried about how to keep corruption out of newly created Governments, particularly in relatively poor countries where people can be corrupted. I said, You should start from the beginning by saying that the first principle is that the civil service must not be tainted by corruption, and you must have people running your state who are not corrupt, and whose objective is to help their politicians govern well and to serve their people to the best of their ability. We in this country must remind ourselves of that a bit, too, given the events of recent times.
	I welcome the very clear shift of direction under our new Prime Minister and his Ministers, but we have some way to go to squeeze out the remaining toxins particularly of the Blair eraand to some extent the Thatcher era as well. I make no apology for mentioning the previous Prime Minister, who happened to be in the same party as me. I do not care much for labels. Reference was made to new Labour, which no one has ever called me, apart from one of my Conservative opponents. She mistakenly described me as a Blairite one day, which caused a great deal of mirth in my constituency, although no one took the comment seriously and she learned better later on. We had a very civilised campaign, we were good friends and so on, but she realised that I was not new Labour and that the word socialist did apply to me. If a label is to be used, I am happy to have that one applied to me.
	What we saw during the Blair era was what I have described, in a perhaps extreme phrase, as the Leninisation of British politics. The essence of Leninisation was to get absolute central control, to smooth out and destroy all resistance in the regime and to have political checks at every level to ensure that what was decided at the centre was carried out at the base. That was the drift. I am not and have never been a Leninist, but interestingly a number of people of Leninist origins, from Leninist organisationsConservative Members are not so familiar with those, although some Labour Members arewere in the Blair regime. Some of the special advisers and political advisers, and even some Ministers, had such associations, so they understood the process of Leninisation and of control; I believe that Lenin's first slogan was, Secure control of the party. Control was the essence of the approach, and that is what happened.
	The attempt to strip away the opposition went on at every level, and of course it marginalised and pushed to one side the principle that underlies British Government: pluralism. All democratic constitutions must contain checks and balances on power, because power is dangerous. People like it when they get it; they do not want to give it away. They want to have more of it, because it is a bit of a drug. The job of constitutions is to restrain those who like power from having too much of it and, sometimes, to take it away from them, by election or by some other means.
	Most constitutions are set up in a way that restrains power, and they contain checks and balances. The American constitution is a classic example of that: it contains the separation and balance of powers. Other constitutions contain restraints within parties. One of Britain's constitutional features that restrained power was the fact that the parties contained a democratic structure that restrained even their leaders. Even that restraint has been stripped out to a large extent from my party and possibly from the Conservative party, and that was damaging. Having healthy debate within parties and restraints on power within parties are as important as having such things within the state.
	Other forms of government existfor example, federalism. America, as well as other countries, depends on such a system, where there are defined roles for central Government and for other parts of government at a lower levelfor example, a regional system could be used, as could some form of states system, as happens in America. Federalism is a way of dividing power so that not all of it resides in the centre.
	Britain has relied for a very long time on a balance of power between different parts not of our constitution as such, but of our political society. Our system has embodied pluralism and, for a long time, strong local government, strong trade unions, strong independent parties that were quite different from each other and that acted as a check on each other, and the balance of power between the Executive and the legislature. Even the legislature is divided between two Houses, which act as a check on each other. All those checks were built in.
	The problem with the recent regime is that it has tried to eliminate all those constraints and checks, so we are examining ways of strengthening them once again. Even within the Executive there were, and I hope that there will be again, strong constraints on power. For example, the Cabinet sometimes acted as a restraining influence on Prime Ministers, but unfortunately that has not been the case in recent times. The papers released after 30 years have told us that back in the days of Jim Callaghan and the 1970s economic crisis, a real debate took place in Cabinet about whether the Government should opt for the International Monetary Fund loan or an alternative economic strategy based on some kind of protectionism. Those on the left wanted the protectionist approach, those on the right wanted the IMF loan and deflation, and there was a balancing group in the middle. A powerful debate went on for some time in Cabinet, but eventually Jim Callaghan got his way because the middle group chose to support the IMF loan people. We ended up with the IMF loan, the social contracts and so on, but a real debate did take place in Cabinet.
	I have heard more recently about a caseI am not talking about under the present Prime Minister, but this certainly applies in respect of the previous oneinvolving a Minister who had recently joined the Cabinet. He had the temerity to make some kind of critical suggestion in Cabinet, and was taken aside afterwards by a fellow member and told, That's not done. I'm afraid we don't do that in the Cabinet.
	In recent years, Cabinet meetings have been very short. Senior civil servants have told our Committee that back in the Wilson era and before, it was typical for 200 papers a year to be delivered to Cabinet by Ministers, or by civil servants through Ministers, in order to discuss policy. The Cabinet meetings would go on for some time while the papers were discussed. I understand that in a particular year during the Blair era just two papers were put to the Cabinet, so something has gone seriously wrong between that earlier time and now. The suggestion is that Cabinet became a cipher and was not the power that it used to be.
	Within our constitution, the civil service was always a rock, although perhaps one did not always agree with it; its independence, impartiality, ability and sense of commitment to the public interest were unquestioned. From time to time, one might disagree with it, but we were certainly aware of it. The idea that civil servants might be corrupt or on the take, or that they might take big jobs in industry later so they might be serving the interests of the companies they were later to work for while they were in government, was unthinkable. There were rules about that, but more important than those were the inner constraints: people had a sense of what was right and what was wrong. It was not the job of a servant of the statea servant of the citizensin the civil service to think about lining their pockets as a result of what they did in government. Some doubtless would have done that, but it was not the view held.
	Such values have perhaps declined, partly as a result of the interface between the civil service and business outside becoming so much more porous. There is a difference in values between serving the public, the state and the citizen as a public servant, and making money. I am not saying that either is not necessary, but they are different. I would emphasise that serving the public is a superior value to making money. I know people, even some within my own family, who say that they do not want to work in the private sector, that it is fine for those who do and who want to make money, but they want to serve society through public service. That is a noble thing to say, to feel and to do. Many people in the civil service do that today. We should not make light of that, play it down or try to control it; we should respect it. Re-establishing that attitude in our civil service would be a very good thing.
	To an extent, I am a golden age-ist and I watched Yes Minister and Yes Prime Minister with great interest. Although the civil service is portrayed as a rule unto itself and Ministers as doing what they are told by those clever civil servants, that was a better model than we have now. In the end, Ministers make the decisions, but the civil service is there to ensure that things do not go wrongto speak truth unto power, as the phrase has it. When Ministers have a notion to do something, the civil servants say, Actually, Minister, that will not work, for these reasons. You may want to spend lots of money and cut taxes, but the sums don't add up. You have to have some kind of fiscal balance.
	We have to have civil servants who know what they are talking about because, with great respect to my hon. Friend the Minister, not all Ministers are brilliant, even when it comes to their own portfolios. They have to depend on civil servants [ Interruption. ] The Minister is obviously a star in his own right. The civil service has to be preserved and reinforced, and its values have to be restored, if they have been damaged.
	We have to reconstruct the civil service, if it is not damaged too badly, with the values that the right hon. Member for Hitchin and Harpenden mentioned. It should also contain a range of views. If we comb out opposition to a particular ideology or philosophy, it is bad for government. When I was a student, I knew a lecturer who became a civil servant in the Treasury. He told me that at the time of the Callaghan devaluation in 1967, some civil servants believed in retaining the high value of the pound, but some of those in the back office were considering the possibility of devaluation and had prepared for it. So when the decision was made, someone in the back office could say, Here's one I prepared earlier. The policy could thus be implemented. What we do not want is civil servants who all believe in a strong currency and would have no idea how to go about devaluation, or its implications, and so would be at a loss.
	Many Conservative Members probably now regret the rash and mistaken decision to join the exchange rate mechanism in 1990, as it led directly to their defeat in 1997. That decision was supported by many Labour Members, although I was not among them. I was an economist in the trade union movement at the time and I wrote time and again that it was a mistake. I predicted in 1990 that it would fail in just the way that it did. Everyone thought that I was a bit off the wall, but later I got a lot of credit. I was not alone, as some other economists thought the same way. In any event, I understand that Nigel Lawson wanted people who agreed with him in his private office. He did not want people who would say, Sorry, Chancellor, but this idea of pinning our currency to other European currencies will not work, the pound will devalue and it will cause a lot of political trouble. It did go badly wrong, but had Nigel Lawson had people around him who warned of the possible consequences, it might not have been quite the tragedy that it was for the economy, the people and, especially, the Conservative party. We might have had a healthier economy later as well.
	We are moving in the right direction, and I want to reinforce the Government's arm on this issue. We have made some serious mistakes in the past, but we are now overcoming them.

Robert Syms: I enjoyed the contribution from the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) as we went back to Victorian times, heard from Lenin and ended up in the Callaghan era. We do not debate the civil service enough in this Chamber. There are 496,000 civil servants who play an important role. How effective our legislation is may depend on a 21-year-old clerk sitting in a benefits office somewhere in the north of England dealing with people. That is how the intent of Parliament is delivered in terms of service delivery to people.
	The civil service is very important, and my experience of local government as opposed to national is that local government is far better at discussing money, terms and conditions, motivation, promotion and how people actually do things. The civil service, however, almost seems to be in a different pot to us, and the only time we ever see civil servantswho are all fairly goodis when we are serving for hours on a Committee.
	As a country, we can be proud of our civil servants. The benefits of having a system that is not corrupt have been mentioned today. One of my observations on the European Union is the cultural difference between northern Europethe Finns, the Swedes and the Britonsand southern Europe, where the sun shines and people are a little more cavalier. We can be very grateful that we have a system that is honest. If other countries have a problemI am thinking of Russia and Turkey, for exampleit is the corruption in their systems that holds them back.
	We should debate our civil service a lot more. If we have a problem, it is probably that we do not recycle people out of the civil service into other careers. I always look to the French system, in which senior civil servants go to work in a bank or for a major institution. As the Minister pointed out, the third sector also offers good examples of people who go out and get experience in the outside world and then come back and work for the public benefit. I know that there are problems with pensions and rewards when people go in and out of the system, but I do not think it would be beyond our wit in this modern age to work out a system whereby those at the top of the civil service would not only be experienced civil servants but would have a much more direct experience of the outside world, on which they so often give advice. That would be an important reform.
	I broadly welcome what the Government are doing through legislation. The problem is that we have moved over recent years to a more presidential system as Downing street becomes ever more important. In the years of my youth, Governments changed fairly regularly. In a way, that helped balance within the system. We had Wilson for six years, Heath for just under four, and then the Labour party under Wilson and Callaghan for five years. The Thatcher Government served a record-breaking 18 years and this Government will, I suspect, certainly manage 13 years. Whether they will get beyond that point remains to be seen. It changes the nature and character of the system, because people suddenly realise that the person at the top, who is the one person who can break through for decision making in Whitehall, is very important for posts and patronage. That has an impact on the way government operates.
	It is important not only that we legislate through a civil service Bill but that Parliament should move to secure more influence over the way Governments conduct their business. Suspicions about the Governmentnot only because of the activities of the previous Prime Minister, when Orders in Council were moved to give Alastair Campbell control over press officers, but because of the way business in this House is guillotined so that we often cannot fully discuss Bills and many other matterslead us to wonder what happens behind the closed doors of Ministries. There is a concern out there.
	The Chairman of the Select Committee, the hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright), mentioned trust. If we keep impugning each others' motives in politics, it is no wonder that the great British public start questioning our motives on issues from expenses to everything else. That downgrades the political process, so we have to be extremely careful. Trust is a commodity. Part of the Government's problem is that if one promises a referendum and does not deliver on it, people might impugn their motives on other issues. Trust is very important in terms of what the Government do.
	The public see a Government who are spending an awful lot on advertising. No doubt, as the Minister says, some very worthy things are advertised, such as road safety, but there is a question mark over whether there is a political objective for all these thingsbut perhaps that is because of the sceptical times in which we live.
	We have heard that there are 70 advisers. I do not have too much of a problem with advisers, and if we look at most other systemsparticularly the American onewe see that we have very few advisers compared with most Governments. They play an important role that allows civil servants to be totally neutral. A lot of the political advisory roles allow links with party political organisations and so on. It depends on their role and whether it involves developing policy or spinning.
	Our concern in the Conservative party, after the history of the past few years, is that rather too many people deal with the media and rather too few deal with blue-skies thinking, policy issues and those important matters to do with delivering a particular governmental agenda. The special adviser budget has gone up from just under 2 million to at least 6 million. The number of press officers in some Departments has gone up tremendously, too.
	I have the privilege of serving on the Health Committee. I note that the number of press officers in the Department of Health has gone up from 15 to 26. Why are so many needed? Occasionally, nasty bugs come along and kill people, so somebody might be needed to put out information then, but the Government have been lauding the amount spent on the NHS and one wonders whether increasing the number of press officers is necessarily the best use of resources.
	I believe that the US and some other Parliaments have better systems than ours. I am not concerned about the number of advisers, but there should be parliamentary scrutiny of who they are, what their role is and whether they are qualified to fulfil it. Parliament should assert itself so that it can see who is being appointed to the various Ministries. There ought to be much more scrutiny by the House.
	The change of Prime Minister gives us an opportunity to revisit some of those matters. The Government have made a number of announcements, and I hope that they continue in the direction that they are going. Given the history, we are a little sceptical. A very important point was made earlier about the need for the parties to find some common ground: any civil service Bill must have the broadest possible support, as its provisions must be sustained and retained for many years ahead.

Charles Walker: I am pleased to be called to speak in this interesting and wide-ranging debate. I have an admission to make, because I hankered after being a special adviser when I was a researcher here 15 or 16 years ago. The daily grind of casework was not for the special adviser: I imagined leaping into the ministerial Jaguar and jetting off to some exotic and exciting meeting. Given the transport that Ministers now get, I have to admit that the notion of leaping into the Toyota Prius does not generate quite the same excitement.
	I accept that special advisers do a very important job but, like my hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms), I am slightly concernednot overly so, as there are much bigger things to worry aboutby the fact that at departmental level their numbers have doubled over the past 12 years from about 34 to 68. They all do much better financially now, as the budget has risen from 1.4 million in 1994-95 to nearly 6 million now.
	However, my problem with special advisers is that I think that the House already has some fairly special advisers: they are known as Members of Parliament. Too often, we are bypassed by our political masters in their smart limousines and ivory towers, who tend to seek advice from outside experts and gurus. The Executive are increasingly powerful, with many highly paid supporters and hangers onI do not want to sound pejorative, as many do an excellent jobwhile Parliament is seen as a rather tedious nuisance that needs to be managed but not listened to. To some degree, the growth in the numbers of special advisers has paralleled the erosion of Parliament in our society, and the strengthening of the Executive.
	I have some questions about special advisers. Are they very special? Who are they? We may have some idea of who they are, but often we do not know where they come from or what they have done to qualify them for their important and highly paid positions.
	How do members of Parliament get to know these special advisers? After all, they are paid for out of the public purse. We are told that they have hugely important and influential jobs, and that they have the ear of Ministers, Prime Ministers, Cabinet Ministers and all sorts of powerful people, yet we in the House of Commons very rarely get to meet them. Indeed, the closest I get to those special advisers is when we on the Public Administration Committee are interviewing Ministers. Behind them sit shadowy figures who pass notes to the Ministers and whisper in their ears.
	I say to the Ministerand to my party's Front Benchers, as I am sure that we will be in power very soonthat I, as a Back Bencher, would like to meet these special advisers and get to know them. Perhaps there could be a system whereby they came before a Select Committee. We do not want to be hostile to those fine young men and womenor some of them might even be middle-aged. We would just like to introduce ourselves and give them the chance to introduce themselves to us, so that we can have a more fruitful and open relationship.
	I have one more important question about special advisers. When they leave Government, where do they go? We need to know. Do they go off into the private sector, never to be heard of again, and do wonderful things and create large profits for shareholders, much though my friend the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) might dislike that? I am pulling his leg gently. Or are they parachuted into quangos, where they do their former masters' bidding?

Kelvin Hopkins: As the hon. Gentleman may be aware, a number of former special advisers are parachuted on to our Front Bench.

Charles Walker: The question is whether they do a useful job there. I will leave my colleague to answer that question in his own good time. We parliamentarians have a right to know what influence special advisers wield after they leave Government and cease serving Ministers. Of course they have every right to earn a fruitful living in whatever field they choose, but we should keep a close eye on them to ensure that they are not wielding undue influence in an area directly connected with Government.
	Moving on to the civil service, I do not want Members in this place to be too po-faced about the idea that promotion is based on merit. Could we honestly look our constituents in the face and say that promotion of a Member of Parliament to the Front Bench is based on merit in all circumstances and cases? Of course in many circumstances and cases it is, but other factors come into play, too. It is the same in political parties, in business and, I am sure, in the civil service. However, we have to be sure that recruitment is based on merit, and that we are getting the very best people into our civil service, regardless of their race, creed, colour or sex. We must make sure that the civil service remains an attractive place in which to build a fruitful and constructive career in public service. Like the hon. Member for Luton, North, I think that public service is a noble thing; that is why we in this place are in public service.
	Civil servants must be free to engage constructively with, and to criticise, the politicians for whom they work. I listened closely to the Yes Minister stories told by my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley). I found it rather refreshing that he could have that sort of engagement with civil servants, and that they could look him in the eyehe is quite a fearsome chapand say, I'm sorry, Secretary of State; you're wrong on this, and I'm right, and I'm executing my duty to the public by providing this information. It is hugely refreshing that that happened 15 years ago; I hope that it still happens today, and if it does not, we must make sure that it does. We want strong, self-confident, robust civil servants who put public duty before all else, and who do not fear for their jobs or careers if they disagree with a Minister or point out the error of his ways.

Kelvin Hopkins: I agree with what the hon. Gentleman says about the powers and qualities that our civil servants should have. Should there not also be a range of views within our civil service, so that civil servants can debate with each other?

Charles Walker: There should of course be a range of views within our civil service. The hon. Gentleman brings me on to my closing point. I do not want to rake up the issue of the 22p, the 20p and the 10p tax rates, but it was interesting to hear the Secretary of State for Justice say on the radio that the best brains had got it wrong. That was an intriguing statement, because I do not think that the best brains in our civil service did get it wrong.

Richard Bacon: My hon. Friend may be interested to know that the permanent secretary to the Treasury, Nick Macpherson, said as much to the Public Accounts Committee. He said a thorough analysis had been conducted, including what he called a distributional analysis of all the effects before the decision was made.

Charles Walker: Absolutely. The Secretary of State for Justice chose his words carefully when he said that the best brains had got it wrong, because civil servants clearly explained the ramifications, and the fact that about 5.3 million people would be worse off. However, a political decision was made to go ahead and change the tax rates. We as politicians must be careful to stand up and accept responsibility when we get it wrong. We must make it clear to the public that the decision was ours as politicians alone, and it was a political decision. The Public Accounts Committee must make it clear that civil servants were entirely impartial in their analysis, and that it was a political decision to go ahead and change the tax rates. With those few, rambling thoughts, I will close with a final statement. Civil servants have to be careful how they conduct themselves at every level. I become very nervous when I see Ministers and Prime Ministers being applauded in and out of public office; that does civil servants no favours.

DEFERRED DIVISION

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I now have to announce the result of a deferred Division on the Question relating to the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill (Money).
	The Ayes were 267, the Noes were 196, so the motion was agreed to.
	 [The Division List is published at the end of today's debates.]

Civil Service

Question again proposed, That the original words stand part of the Question.

Julian Lewis: Because I was elected on 1 May 1997, which could be described as the mirror image for the Conservative party of the significance of 1 May 2008 for the Government, my experience of direct dealings with civil servants is limited to two periods in my life: first, when I was an academic researcher delving into the civil service archives for the period covering the end of the second world war and the start of the cold war; and, secondly, when I was deputy director of the Conservative research department. Happily, my duties included shining a spotlight on Leninists in the Labour party, helpfully acknowledged in the entertaining speech by the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins).
	From the first experience, I concluded that the civil service has, in fact, always been highly politicalbut not party political. That is one of the two themes that I wish to develop. From the latter experience, I can throw some light on the questions asked by my exuberant hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) about where special advisers come from, and, indeed, where they goor at least, what happened in the closing years of the Thatcher Administration. We are discussing the perpetual problem of the balance between professional expertise and mandated political leadership. Many years ago, long before Yes Minister made the notion of Ministers having to be house-trained by their civil servants almost a byword of popular humour, I remember reading an essay by the late Tony Crosland, in which he spelt out why Minister, were often ineffective in government, or at least, why their policies differed so little from those of their predecessors. He explained that even the most intelligent Minister, on taking up a new position, could probably expect to take a year to 18 months before gaining command of their brief. Within another year or 18 months, they might be moved on to another job.
	The problem that Ministers faced, of not having sufficient expertise, has in large measure been addressed by the appointment of special advisers, and I am going to sing their praises in a moment or two. First, however, I want to refer to the period in which I delved into the archives for the period 1942 to 1947, during which Government Departments were trying to work out what the British empireas it still just about was at that stagewould have to defend itself against when the second world war was over.
	Huge arguments erupted between the Foreign Office, which believed that the Anglo-Soviet alliance of 1941 onwardsthe treaty was signed in 1942should be the cornerstone of our post-war foreign policy, and the chiefs of staff and their advisers, who believed that the Soviet Union would probably be the greatest potential military threat facing this country. What struck me at the time was that an argument was raging, effectively, between two Departments of civil servants, and how little the Ministers, let alone the Prime Minister, were involved in the process.
	The debate was highly political, but it was not party political. It therefore occurred to me that perhaps the real power in the land lay more with the professional civil servant and the professional expert, rather than with the political leader. I do not think anyone under any Government would dispute that a good civil servant is one with strong opinions about the political issues of the day, who will argue those opinions on their merits, provided that they do not allow themselves unduly to be swayed by party political considerations.
	The reverse of that coin is that if a Minister comes into office without a high degree of preliminary expertise, he or she will be somewhat adrift, because at the point at which the Minister wishes to take party political considerations into account, the civil servant, if he or she is doing the job properly, will rightly turn round to the Minister and say, I really can't advise you on that, Minister. I am not party political and this is a party political matter.
	When I was working in the Conservative research department, I used to see a career progression, almost. We would have our individual desk officers, as we still do today, shadowing each Department of state. The young people working at those desks would develop considerable expertise. When they had done that for a few years, and because we were in government, they would be able to apply for, and more often than not get, jobs as special advisers. As I said in an earlier intervention, it was felt quite adequate to have two special advisers in most Departments, one sitting more or less at the right hand of the Secretary of State, and the other being available to the middle-ranking and junior Ministers.
	I thought that that was a thoroughly good thing, because it meant that the Minister had someone to whom he or she could turn for advice when party political matters were relevant, and it was a way in which the political party to which the Minister belonged could have a direct channel to the Minister, without being bogged down or prevented from reaching the Minister by the serried ranks of party politically neutral civil servants in between. I thought that that was a good system, and I believe to this day that it is a good system, but we do not require many people to fulfil that role.
	On the contrary, the fact that there was just one special adviser for each Cabinet Minister and one more for the rest was a very good thing, because it meant that there was no dithering about who to consult, there was a direct channel of communication, and the Minister had someone on whom to rely to consider the political implicationssomeone whose time was not taken up with numerous other duties such as an elected politician inevitably must perform, and someone who was party political and also an expert in the field. Such special advisers went on, in many cases, to become Conservative MPs, including the present Leader of the Oppositionand a jolly good thing too.
	But there is a different sort of special adviser out there today. That sort of special adviser is not a confidant for a Minister, not a channel of communication for the party, and certainly not someone doing blue-skies thinkingor perhaps red-dawn thinking for the present Government. It is someone whose job it is to go out there and distort the news, or at least massage the news, for the benefit of relationships with reporters. When my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) winds up, I will be interested to hear how he reacts to this suggestion: that when a Conservative Government next come to power, party political appointees should only be special advisers and no longer be press officers. They would do precisely what their name implies: give special advice, not spin.

Greg Clark: This has been a debate of light and shade. The hon. Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) captured some of the crucial aspects of the debate. On the one hand, we are debating the future of the civil servicethe successor to the Northcote-Trevelyan reforms of 150-plus years ago. However, as the hon. Gentleman said, at the same time it falls to the Opposition to expose, and hold the Government to account for, some of the excesses that we see in the current arrangement. It is not entirely surprising that the speeches today have covered the different aspects of that.
	It is also not surprising, in a week when Ministers have been called on to the airwaves to give the best possible gloss on the Government's difficultiesour side have had to do that in the pastthat the question of presentation and spin has been applied to the administration of the Government and those charged with carrying that out.  [Interruption.] I am pleased that the Minister for the Cabinet Office has come back; he has done great service over the weekend, doing his Comical Ali bit and presenting the best possible gloss on the Government's experiences. Incidentally, I noticed that the Cabinet Office website changed mysteriously on 29 April, two days before the local elections. It said, in bold type, that the No. 1 priority for the Minister was now supporting the Prime Minister. It comes to a pretty pass when the Prime Minister needs to give instructions to his colleagues through their job descriptions.
	Today's debate has been about three things: spin, waste and incompetence. That is a serious matter.  [Interruption.] Ministers may laugh, but the noble Lord Butler's report for the Better Government initiative pointed to precisely those criticisms and suggested that they should be addressed seriously. We would not expect such words as spin, waste and incompetence to be associated with the British civil service, yet this Government have brought the service to such a situation that those words are the subject of debate.
	I was a special adviser at the Department of Trade and Industry; I declare that interest. As my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) said, in those days there was only one; now there are three special advisers at the successor Department, the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform. Contrary to what the Minister for the Cabinet Office said, John Major limited the number of special advisers to 38; there are now 68 across the Government.
	A question arises that needs to be answered: why do this Government need to resort to so many more special advisers to do more or less the same job as was done under the previous Conservative Government? The example of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley), who is temporarily absent from the Chamber, has not been followed at all: according to that example, officials, including special advisers, should see their role as giving the most accurate presentation of information and disclosing it in response to a question. Today, however, their role is often to prevent the disclosure of that information.

Edward Miliband: indicated dissent.

Greg Clark: The right hon. Gentleman shakes his head, but he should be careful; he himself has experience of withholding information. He and I have been corresponding about whether, would you believe, it is reasonable for me to have sight of the Cabinet Office's staff magazine. That seems a fairly innocuous proposition: it might be useful for a team shadowing the Cabinet Office to know what is going on there, given the hopeful prospect that we might inherit it in due course. Imagine my astonishment when the Minister answered my parliamentary question by saying that it was not in the public interest for me to be given access to that magazine. I was generous to him and assumed that this was a mistake, so I wrote him a friendly note saying:
	I am at a loss to understand why you won't let Members of Parliament see copies of the Cabinet Office staff magazine...Would you mind reconsidering?
	But just in case he did not, I said:
	or alternatively, treat this as a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
	I fully expected to get a copy of the magazine through the post, but amazingly the Minister instructed his officials to go through the bureaucracy of denying permission for that. I have a two-page letter from the freedom of information team within the Cabinet Office saying that it will take not just the standard 20 working days but
	an additional 20 days to take a decision on where the balance of public interest lies
	in Members of Parliament seeing the Cabinet Office staff magazine. That is from a Minister who only last week told the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for Cannock Chase that when it came to freedom of information,
	I agree with Gus
	the Cabinet Secretary
	that there is a big culture change that FOI brings. I think that overall it is a positive culture change for government.
	I am afraid that the culture change seems yet to affect the right hon. Gentleman.
	There are important questions, and they are not motivated purely by political partisanship, as the Minister suggested in his reaction to the speech by my right hon. Friend the Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude). In particular, the Government, having set out a course of freedom of information and greater impartiality through the White Paper, are failing to live up to the standards that apply in that document. For example, there is the question of waste. All of us, every day, receive mailbags full of ever-more-glossy, ever-more-expensively produced publications, often from quangos, all with advertising and public relations budgets. I am not saying that all money spent on advertising and public relations is wasted, but there is a question of accountability. How are we to know that the vast sums of money being spent, especially by non-statutory bodies, are being spent in people's best interests? Why, for example, has the Civil Aviation Authority paid in the past five years nearly 500,000 to one single PR company and 700,000 to another? Why has the Meat and Livestock Commission paid out 750,000 to a PR company? The East of England Development Agency has paid one single PR company 500,000. Many businesses instruct PR firms to influence Ministers, but Ministers are instructing PR firms to do their job of communicating with the electorate.
	When it comes to incompetence, where to start? This is a Government who take more and more information from citizens and then proceed to lose it. The personal details of 25 million citizens were lost by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs when Ministers, including those present, knew that there was a systemic problem across government because it was reported to them in the July before the incident was reported. One of my constituents brought to my attention the fact that the online delivery team within the Legal Services Commission in the Ministry of Justice had won the 2007 civil service award for technology. The very next day after the prize was awarded, my constituent received an e-mail saying:
	we are aware that a number of providers have had difficulties being able to sign into the new LSC online and as a result of this we have made the decision to close LSC online from Monday 19 November until further notice.
	Why did one of my constituents receive a letter confirming an urgent gynaecological appointment? He was rather baffled by that, as he is a 65-year-old man. That just shows the degree of chaos and confusion in the way that information is held in the Department of Health. It is important that Ministers are held to account for the incompetent handling of the administration of government.
	We heard some excellent speeches by right hon. and hon. Members. The Chairman of the Public Administration Committee, who serves with great distinction, made a marvellous speech, with a sweep of history worthy of Melvyn Bragg's programme, In Our Time, looking back to the origins of the current civil service settlement. The commendation of the 22 pages of the Northcote-Trevelyan report is a lesson to the Government and to the prospective Government on the benefits of economy as regards Government publications.
	The hon. Gentleman said that in the previous Conservative Government, the question, Is he one of us? would be asked. I can envisage the same question being asked by the current Prime Minister. Indeed, I know from some of my friends and colleagues who have served in the Government in various Departments with which the Prime Minister has been associated that it is almost exactly one that passes his lips. If not expressed in quite such clear terms, it is certainly an assessment that is made. The hon. Gentleman is to be commended for the fact that we have the prospect of a civil service Bill, and I congratulate the Government on making that progress. It is very much down to the work of the hon. Gentleman's Committee, supported by the hon. Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins), and other Committee members over the years. The prospect of that Bill is a great step forward, and it is important that we proceed to scrutinise the legislation on a cross-party basis. There is a precedent for that: the Charities Bill proceeded for the most part without political contention getting in the way of proper scrutiny or the achievement of a consensus on what should be a charity, and on how charities should be regulated. I hope that it will be possible to make similar progress on the civil service Bill.
	The contribution of my right hon. Friend the Member for Hitchin and Harpenden (Mr. Lilley) reminds us of his distinguished career. He quoted with alarm what he regarded as a departure from the high standards that he enjoyed as Secretary of State. When his officials made a mistake on his behalf and caused him to say things that were inaccurate, he said that he was intemperate in his response. I have only ever seen my right hon. Friend in temperate mode; I cannot imagine the hinted fury that he pointed to. He made an important point about getting specialist skills into the civil service. It is important that there is such a contribution. I cannot understand why it is still relatively unusual for people to move backwards and forwards between the public sector, the third sector and government. We should address the question of why people should not regard themselves as doing particular jobs, and of why those sectors are in silos so that it is relatively unusual and remarkable when people move between them.
	The hon. Member for Luton, North made a reasonable contribution. It was not reasonable in terms of its quality because its analysis of some of the drivers of centralisation was quite brilliant. He is right to say that we should avoid making the matter too personal and that we should not ascribe malign motives, but there was a plan. One of the great differences between the parties is that the Government had a deliberate plan to exercise central control over Governmentperhaps for the best of intentions. Perhaps it was the case that Ministers thought that by defining a template for how things should be run and making sure that it was implemented without any movement from it, they could achieve high standards. We were always sceptical of that approach. The hon. Gentleman described it as Leninist, and it involved controlling the related information as well as the plans. We were sceptical of that approach, and we can now see that it has not worked and that we should move away from it. The hon. Gentleman's insight into that process was extremely valuable.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) talked about the longevity of Governments, and he made the point that we should not impugn each other's motivations because it does decrease the standard of respect for all politicians. My hon. Friend the Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) made a passionate contribution. I know that he is a committed member of the Select Committee, and he will be engaged in the scrutiny of the Bill, ensuring that we take a close interest in the passage of the Bill. My hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) pointed out in his contribution some of the history of the use of special advisers. He made a point, on which we should reflect, about whether it would be useful discipline to restrict special advisers solely to comments on matters of policy rather than allowing them to brief the press.

Robert Key: I listened with great interest to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis). He described the situation in which I was parachuted in during a ministerial reshuffle to be responsible for local government finance, specifically the poll tax, at nil notice. I recognise some of the situations that he described.
	Would my hon. Friend the Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) confirm that there is a difference between our perception of the civil service as it operates in Whitehall and of the large number of civil servants who do straightforward administrative but absolutely vital jobs in every part of the country? They are formidable in their professionalism and paid far too little. They have great responsibilities in carrying out policies engineered in Whitehall, and we should not necessarily lump them all together.

Greg Clark: My hon. Friend is right to pay tribute to the wider spread of civil servants. They include people who work in local government, and, as constituency Members of Parliament, we all know that they do tremendous work in dealing with some of our constituents' problems.
	We have debated the Government's management of the civil service. As the Minister for the Cabinet Office said, one of the ways in which the Government try to manage the civil service is through capability reviews, which they impose on all Whitehall Departments. One naturally assumed that the Cabinet Office, which is responsible for those reviews, should lead by example, especially when No. 10 Downing street is, and I quote
	a management unit of the Cabinet Office.
	Being the Minister responsible for assessing the Prime Minister's capability must be terrifying. I therefore read the assessment with interest.
	When the questions verge on the impertinent, they go to the heart of the problems at No. 10. The first question may have given hope to the Minister for the Cabinet Office's brotherand perhaps even to him. The question asked:
	Do you
	No. 10 Downing street
	have a leadership development/promotion process that is fair and transparent?
	The second question asked:
	How do you manage the performance of everyoneby rewarding good performance and tackling poor performance?
	Mr. Deputy Speaker, I suspect that you share my dismay but not my surprise to learn that No. 10 Downing street falls down in the effectiveness of the processes to ensure that it benefits from competent leadership and roots out poor performance. The inspectors of the capability reviews concluded that that was an urgent development area for No. 10.
	According to the inspectors, on the leadership of No. 10 Downing street, there are
	significant weaknesses in capability for future delivery that require urgent action.
	Sadly, it appears that No. 10 Downing street,
	is not well placed to tackle these weaknesses and needs significant additional action.
	The inspectors' conclusion is bleak. No. 10
	is not well placed to deliver improvement in the medium term.
	The inspectors, who report to the Minister for the Cabinet Office, have reached the same conclusion that the electors of this country are reaching. The Government have trebled spending on spin and PR but cannot communicate a vision for the future. They have intruded into people's lives far more than any British Government in history, yet display flagrant disregard for the security of the information that has been entrusted to them.
	The Government do not only lose confidential data from millions of people, and have not only lost all credibility for their promise to cut waste or end the culture of spin, but have lost their way, lost the trust of their core supporters, lost the control of their local government heartlands and lost the London mayoralty. They are led by a Prime Minister who has increasingly lost the plotall that is left for them to do is lose the general election.

Phil Hope: I have listened with great interest to the important points made during this afternoon's debate. Unfortunately, it began extraordinarily badly with a contribution from the right hon. Member for Horsham (Mr. Maude) that was irrelevant in content, tawdry in style and persuaded no Conservative Back Benchers, let alone us, to vote for the motion. It ended with the hon. Member for Tunbridge Wells (Greg Clark) talking about spin and waste, which describes his badly used 17 minutes.
	I begin by doing what I hope that all hon. Members would supportpaying tribute to the professionalism and dedication of our civil service. I want to place on record my gratitude and admiration for the hugely diverse range of activities that civil servants throughout the country undertake, day in, day out, with great professionalism and commitment.
	The United Kingdom civil service is deservedly internationally renowned for its high standards. As my right hon. Friend the Minister for the Cabinet Office said, the key is to ensure that we maintain and build on those standards as the service evolves to meet the challenges ahead.
	Several speakers have taken us on a history tour, beginning with establishing the basis for our civil service more than 150 years ago in the Northcote-Trevelyan report. It was good to see my hon. Friend the Member for Cannock Chase (Dr. Wright) on such good form this afternoon. He made a thoughtful and serious contribution, which asked the core question about the relationship between the civil service and the politicians who are elected to govern the country. He discussed the dilemmas that that creates and how we move forward. Many members of the Public Administration Committee, which my hon. Friend chairs, spoke about a draft civil service Bill. The principles set out in the Northcote-Trevelyan reporta politically impartial permanent civil service, recruited on the basis of merit through fair and open competitionendure and continue to underpin the service as we know it today. They still form the bedrock of the civil service, even in a profoundly different environment from that in which they were first written. Let me assure the House that the Government are fully committed to maintaining and upholding those principles for the civil service of the future.
	Indeed, our actions speak louder than our words in that regard. The provisions of the draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, which Opposition Members seem to have forgotten was published on 25 March, place the core values of the civil serviceintegrity, honesty, impartiality and objectivityin statute. My hon. Friend said that we should not make the provisions over-elaborate, but ensure that the civil service is ruled through Parliament, not through the royal prerogative, and that we do the right thing on the right lines. That is exactly what we are doing. The Bill will be taken through a process of pre-legislative scrutiny involving a Joint Committee of both Houses over the next few months. The Bill also provides for a statutory civil service commission tasked with upholding the key principle of recruitment to the civil service on merit, through fair and open competition. The new commission will be established as an Executive non-departmental public body, which will underline its independence as a guardian of that fundamental principle.
	My hon. Friend the Member for Luton, North (Kelvin Hopkins) used the word honour in talking about people who work for the civil service. That word is not in the Billthe other words that I mentioned arebut I certainly understand and recognise the spirit that he described. I did not recognise his analysis of the Leninisation that he described, but if there has been a revolution since 1997, it has been in our ability to create full employment and in lifting 600,000 children and 1 million pensioners out of poverty. That is the kind of revolution that this country has been pleased to see over the past 10 years.
	The hon. Member for Richmond Park (Susan Kramer) asked a couple of questions about pre-appointment hearings. Let me remind the House that we are introducing pre-appointment hearings to enable Select Committees to take evidence from candidates for key posts. The final decision will remain with the appointing Minister, but they will take into consideration the Committee's views before deciding whether to proceed with an appointment.
	The hon. Lady asked why the civil service commissioners will not be appointed by Parliament. Under our proposals for increased parliamentary scrutiny of public appointments, the first civil service commissioner will be put forward for pre-appointment scrutiny by the relevant Select Committee. She also asked whether senior appointments to non-departmental public bodies, or quangos, should be subject to pre-appointment scrutiny by Parliament. I am glad to tell her that we agree with her. We are committed to increasing democratic scrutiny of a range of senior appointments to the boards of non-departmental public bodies. We are currently working with the Liaison Committee to agree a final list of posts that will be suitable for such pre-appointment hearings, which we hope to publish shortly.
	The draft Constitutional Renewal Bill contains a number of other reforms, which will underpin and uphold the impartiality of the civil service. The Bill makes provision for a code of conduct for civil servants and a code of conduct for special advisers, and for copies of those codes to be laid before Parliament. The Bill also makes provision for a report on special adviser numbers and costs, and for the report to be laid before Parliament. We have heard a lot of talk about special advisers, mainly from the Opposition, but I want to remind hon. Members that in his evidence to the Public Administration Committee on civil service legislation only last week, the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Gus O'Donnell, was clear that, with the numbers that we have currently74 special advisers from a total of 500,000 civil servicepoliticisation is
	is not a problem at all. Indeed, good quality special advisers around the system, two per minister in general, work well.
	Special advisers protect the civil service and prevent politicisation, because they do the things that Ministers want to have done, but which would be inappropriate for permanent civil servants to do.

Charles Walker: rose

Phil Hope: I was just coming to the hon. Gentleman, who revealed his ambition to be a special adviser.  [ Interruption. ] Yes, I could offer him a job, as my right hon. Friend the Minister suggests, but I do not think that the kind of advice that he would give us would be that helpful. The hon. Gentleman said that even if he cannot become a special adviser, he would like to meet one. All that he needs to do is have a word with his leader. The hon. Member for New Forest, East (Dr. Lewis) reminded the House that the Leader of the Opposition used to be a special adviser. Perhaps the Leader of the Opposition would like to remind the hon. Member for Broxbourne (Mr. Walker) of the shadowy role that he played as a special adviser to Norman Lamont, when the Tory debacle of crashing out of the exchange rate mechanism happened in the 1990s. The Opposition have conveniently forgotten that, but believe you me, Mr. Deputy Speaker, we have not.
	The hon. Gentleman also asked what happens to special advisers when they leave the civil service. He will be pleased to know that the Code of Conduct for Special Advisers says:
	All civil servants, including special advisers, are subject to the Rules on the acceptance of outside appointments by Crown servants...for the first two years after leaving office. They are required, in the circumstances set out in the rules, to obtain prior approval to accept an outside appointment.
	I hope that that answers his question.
	Hon. Members made several points about Government communications. The right hon. Member for Horsham repeated allegations about some kind of impropriety by the Government when they made announcements about neighbourhood policing. I suggest that he should get himself on to the circulation lists of the hon. Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles) and the right hon. Member for Haltemprice and Howden (David Davis), both of whom have received letters from the permanent secretary that make it clear why the allegations that the right hon. Member for Horsham has seen fit to repeat today are wrong. Such mudslinging will not work, even though he continues to repeat those allegations.
	Government spending on advertising has increased since 1997, and we are pleased that it has. It has increased from 69 million in 1996-97 to 154 million in 2006-07. I am pleased to announce those figures because we are saving lives as a result of that Government advertising and marketing. We are on course to meet the 10-year casualty reduction target by 2010, which will mean that there has been a 40 per cent. reduction in the number of people killed or seriously injured.
	The hon. Member for Poole (Mr. Syms) complained about the increase in press officers in the Department of Health. Successful advertising and marketing by the Department is helping to achieve a number of important health targets on smoking. The target to reduce the prevalence of smoking among the general population to 21 per cent. by 2010 is a key and essential part of achieving a healthier society.
	The civil service and its world has changed dramatically since 1854. That is why important reforms are now taking place, such as the transformation of the Pension Service. Service customers already benefit from a better service that has been designed around their needs. The Department for Work and Pensions pays more than 98 per cent. of its customers by direct payment. That is not only more convenient, but is saving about 1 billion a year between 2005 and 2010.
	There have been reductions in the number of civil servants, and more of them have been relocated outside London and the south-east. We are investing heavily in a skills programme for the development of the civil service, and we have a capability review programme that is driving forward the process of change within the civil service.
	It is unfortunate that the Conservative party has used this debate not to celebrate the success of the civil service and the challenges ahead, but to make cheap and inaccurate party political points. I am glad that Madam Deputy Speaker intervened on the right hon. Member for Horsham, quite rightly, as he drifted well away from his brief.
	We are committed to legislating for the civil service and to safeguarding its impartiality. We have published measures as part of our draft Constitutional Renewal Bill, and we welcome hon. Members' views on that. We are committed to keeping public expenditure under control while ensuring that civil servants have the skills and tools that they need to deliver better services with less. We will continue to undertake a programme of investment and renewal to ensure that Government Departments are in the best possible shape to meet the challenges and demands of the next 150 years.

Question put, That the original words stand part of the Question:
	 The House divided: Ayes 230, Noes 302.

Question accordingly negatived.
	 Question, That the proposed words be there added,  put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 31 (Questions on amendments):
	 The House divided: Ayes 301, Noes 225.

Question accordingly agreed to.
	Mr. Deputy Speaker  forthwith declared the main Question, as amended, to be agreed to.
	 Resolved,
	That this House commends the Government's measures to protect the impartiality of the Civil Service, in particular through its decision to legislate for the core principles and values of the Civil Service; believes that this decision builds on previous improvements, including an enhanced role for the Civil Service Commissioners, the publication of a code of conduct for special advisers and an updated code of conduct for civil servants; welcomes the improvements in efficiency of the Civil Service, which have allowed its size to be reduced in line with the Gershon recommendations; further welcomes the Government's continuing commitment to effective public information campaigns; supports the other steps to strengthen the accountability of government, including a new Ministerial Code and a new independent adviser on Ministerial interests, as well as pre-appointment hearings for key public appointments; and believes that all these measures contribute to a more efficient, transparent, accountable and effective government to better serve the people of this country.

Private Business

Broads Authority Bill (By Order)

[Relevant document: The Special Report from the Committee on the Broads Authority Bill, HC 961, Session 2006-07.]
	 Order for Third Reading read.

Ian Gibson: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read the Third time.
	Before I begin, I want to pay a compliment to the Members who have turned up to discuss the issue this afternoonparticularly my colleagues from Norfolk who have been in the forefront during discussions on the issue, and members of the Select Committee that met to make the Bill much tighter and sharper than it was on Second Reading. I pay an individual compliment to the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), who sadly missed Second Reading owing to tragic circumstances. It is grand to see him in the Chamber today, and I hope that he will have the opportunity to extend his interest in the Bill.
	The prime purpose of the Bill is public safety on the waterways of the broads, not only for people from Norfolk and Suffolk who use the broads but for people from across the world, the UK and Europe. The broads are a popular tourist resort, with many boats dodging about during the summer. We are rather concerned about public safety on the waterways. There has been agreement between the Broads Authority and three national boating organisations on the Bill's provisions. I shall say more about that later.
	Two specific issues arose from the Select Committee on the Bill, which was chaired by my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor). I thank him for the efforts that were put in. The authority has incorporated as much as possible from the legal agreements with the boating organisations in the Bill. If people have looked at the Bill, they will have seen how it has changed since Second Reading.
	Following the Committee's comments on direct elections, I am told that the Broads Authority will consider the principle in its meeting on Friday, after we have heard what the Minister has to say this afternoon. The authority believes that direct elections are a matter for the Government and are not appropriate for the Bill.

David Taylor: I did indeed chair the Committee, which included the hon. Members for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb) and for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) and my hon. Friend the Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan). There were not extensive concerns from across the spectrum at all, but the key concern that we heard from the people from whom we took evidence was about the accountability and representative nature of the Broads Authority. It was important that our comments to the House covered the suggestion that that concern should be remedied through direct election, such as that which we see in the national park authorities and elsewhere. I hope that what is proposed and what the Minister requires will be adequate to meet the concerns that we heard over the days in which we took evidence. That is very important. I found most of the rest of the Bill to be worth while and understandable.

Ian Gibson: I thank my hon. Friend for that intervention. I look forward to hearing what the Minister has to say about taking the issue on and about how it will be handled. It not only reflects on the Broads Authority but has implications for other waterways authorities.

Norman Lamb: I should be grateful if the hon. Gentleman used this opportunity to give his view on direct elections. It was extremely helpful to hear the comments of the Chairman of the Committee, but does the hon. Gentleman support the principle, too?

Ian Gibson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for raising that question. The matter has been resolved in Scotland, so it seems to me that there are lessons to be learned there. He and I have had discussions with the Broads Authority, and I believe that the door was beginning to open on this issue. We both said in public, and to the local newspaper, that it would be a good idea to try to find ways forward, as direct elections would allow the many people who want to play a part in the broads to go through an electoral process. There is a public mood for that to happen, and I think it should be encouraged. I hope that the Broads Authority will respond positively on Friday, and that the Minister will give the proposal all the backing that he can.
	Some of the issues that arose on Second Reading have been handled in the appropriate way, through open debate. I think that there is much more to come, but I repeat that the House must understand that no provision for direct elections can be put on the face of the Bill. The Bill has implications for other areas of the country, and new legislation may be needed if we want direct elections in other places. If that is the decision of the individuals concerned, I shall give it my support.
	Of course, promoting a private Bill was not chosen lightly as a course of action. After many years of discussion with Government officials, it became clear that that was the only route open to the authority if various important matters of safety were to be addressed. With many of the proposals, the authority is following a path already paved by British Waterways and the Environment Agency, and it acknowledges the help and advice that those organisations have given.
	It is worth putting it on the record that the authority is also grateful to successive Ministers in the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs: my right hon. Friend the Member for Cardiff, South and Penarth (Alun Michael) and my hon. Friends the Members for Brent, North (Barry Gardiner) and for South Dorset (Jim Knight)the latter is now Minister for Schools and Learnersand the present Under-Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, my hon. Friend the Member for Chatham and Aylesford (Jonathan Shaw).
	The Bill includes a number of general provisions designed to improve safety on the broads' waterways, and to ensure that they are managed effectively in the interests of all users. The need for additional powers has been highlighted by the requirements of the port marine safety code and by specific incidents. The principle underlying them was accepted on Second Reading and in Committee, and I do not intend to repeat the argument here.
	The agreements with the national boating organisations have also raised some issues. For the past two years the Broads Authority has been working hard with the Royal Yachting Association, the British Marine Federation and the Inland Waterways Association to develop and refine the Bill. It has reached agreements with them over the Bill's provisions, and they can be seen in schedule 1.
	My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire mentioned two specific issues arising from the Committee stage. Evidence and arguments from the Broads Authority were considered in July 2007, and four petitioners and their agents were heard at that sitting. The Committee also received a report from the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. A full discussion of the relevant issues was held, and the Committee concluded that the Bill should be allowed to proceed, with some amendments. The Broads Authority put forward a number of amendments to deal with concerns raised during the consultation process, while other amendments were designed to meet recommendations from the Secretary of State that included questions about how membership of the Broads Authority came about.
	The status of the legal agreements was raised on Second Reading. As is often the case with private Bills, the Broads Authority entered into agreements with interested parties about the operation of certain provisions in the Bill. Following concerns expressed by the Committee, the authority and the national boating bodies gave further consideration to those agreements, with a view to incorporating certain of their provisions in the Bill. In that regard, I invite hon. Members to look at schedule 1, where they will see that words such as independent, scrutiny and so on have been added.
	A number of the provisions in the agreements were already covered in the Bill, either specifically or in general terms. It has been agreed that most of the remainder should be included in the Bill, and the amendments made at consideration stage secure that.
	I believe that parish council representation should be included in the direct elections, and parish councillors have lobbied all the Norfolk MPs for that. Parish councils have a serious interest in the broads, and given the important work that their members do, they would like to participate in some way if there are to be direct elections.
	The authority has 21 members, to take account of the national and local interests and to reflect its duties and responsibilities. Ten are appointed by the Secretary of State, nine by the eight local authorities in the area, and two by the authority from its statutory navigation committee. The local authority members are councillors, who have been elected locally; that is an important link with the local community, but that is not to say that the link could not be furthered and improved. The Bill includes no proposals to change overall membership, but as I pointed out, there may be additions to, or adaptations of, that membership.
	Hon. Members will probably recall that the issue of direct elections and parish council representation on the Broads Authority was raised on Second Reading. The report of the Committee on the Broads Authority Bill stated that
	the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000 set out in its framework for the constitution of a National Park that a minimum of 20 per cent of members of the National Park Authority were to be elected in a poll by those on the local government electoral register within the Park area. A similar model should be considered for the Broads Authority.
	As the Authority has sought to extend its powers, we believe that the Government should now consider the constitution of the Authority.
	We will hear about that shortly. The report continued:
	We are not minded to amend the Bill to include such provisions.

Henry Bellingham: The hon. Gentleman is explaining matters succinctly. He has done a great deal of work on the Bill, and I am grateful to him for that. However, does he agree with me that we still have not resolved the issue of parish council representation? What more does he think should be done to make sure that the issue is addressed with real clarity?

Ian Gibson: As I said, parish councillors are very important, and they should be part of the equation that is considered by the Broads Authority. There are questions to do with parish councils, including whether they cover the whole area of the broads and how much of the broads is in each parish. That is not perhaps as important as having people on the authority who are devoted, enthusiastic, keen, determined, knowledgeable and interested in spending many hours helping to develop the broads.
	Before someone asks me whether the broads will be flooded by some agency or other, let me add that I think that the broads will be there for at least 50 years. That commitment was made in a debate yesterday. The broads will not be salinated or deliberately flooded. Of course, we have no idea what climate change will do to them; we cannot greatly control that, but we will make attempts to do so.
	We have to think about how we will organise the waterways in the next 50 years. We do not believe that the place to do that is in the Bill. We had discussions on the issue, but the advice that we were given was that some other formal regulatory pathway would have to be used to put that into the equation. That is not an excuse to do nothing; I believe that the sincere intention is to try to use a mechanism, as soon as possible, to ensure that that happens in the broads and in other areas, with the Norfolk broads blazing a trail. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is well placed to consider those issues with the Broads Authority, and to bring forward the necessary legislation.
	It falls to DEFRA to consider the issue of direct elections and the related matter of parish council representation on the authority. The authority will be considering the principle on Friday. The members will want to take into account the views of the House and, in particular, the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. I mentioned the chairmanship of my hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire; we agree with the Committee that the Bill is not the place in which to seek to make changes to the membership of the authority, but that is certainly an issue to be considered.
	I hope that the Bill will successfully complete Third Reading and move on to the other place. Its proposals affect the rights of navigation and would improve safety on the broads, to the benefit of all those who use the waterways. The objective of public safety is a legitimate ground for qualifying what might otherwise be an unhindered public right. Consider, for example, the measures that Parliament introduced for the protection of motorists. It made the wearing of seat belts compulsoryit was predicted that that would be a failure, but it has been an amazing successand it gave local authorities the ability to regulate the way in which roads are used. So there are parallels setting out how to make effective changes and improve the safety of people who use facilities. Many of the provisions in the Bill are well precedented elsewhere. The authority believes that it has the correct balance, and the Bill incorporates the necessary measure of protection for the private individual. Of course, there will be individuals who do not agree, but in general many people seem to think that the measure should be in place. Like the seat belt regulations, I think that the measure will become part and parcel of people's way of life; it will be part of the way in which they use the broads.
	Before the Bill was deposited, the authority spent a year on preparatory work, and on consultation and discussion with DEFRA, national and local boating organisations and other key stakeholders. Discussions with national boating bodies have continued, and resulted in many of the changes that have been made as the Bill has progressed. If we are honest, we know from experience that things evolve and change: the spirit is there, as long as public safety is foremost in those equations and considerations.
	There was widespread consultation, and changes were made by the authority to meet the concerns that were raised. No petitions were received from any organisation in the House but, importantly, there were four private petitioners. All the issues pursued by boating organisations have been addressed. The authority has secured agreement with the main boating organisations on the Bill's provisions. It is important to introduce the Billthe summer is a-coming, and boats will be scurrying around the broadsand we should push the legislation through, although I expect that it will be held up in another place.

David Taylor: My hon. Friend referred to four petitions against the Bill which triggered the witness statements that were given to our Committee. The firm impression that I gained from the petitioners was that they had lodged technical petitions, because they wanted to air their concerns and seek reassurances. As far as I recall, there was no fundamental, dyed-in-the-wool opposition to the Bill's provisions.

Ian Gibson: I concur with my hon. Friend, and agree that that is true. At the same time, however, those petitions were taken seriously by his Committee, and they are certainly taken seriously by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) and me. In fact, we met some of the petitioners, with the Broads Authority in tow, and we discussed the issues. We are always keen to hear what they have to say. As I said, in a year or two years, other changes and differences may arise in that environment that require extra legislation. Who knows what will happen? We need a Bill in place so that we can adapt it for the safety of the people who use the waters.

Norman Lamb: Further to the intervention by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), I suspect that the hon. Gentleman will agree that there are strong views out there about the legislation and the authority. The important thing is how the powers are used by the authority once they have been introducedthat is the test. Does he agree that it is important to rebuild trust between the authority and people who have voiced concerns?

Ian Gibson: Yes, I am 100 per cent. for trust, confidence-building and making sure that there is firm representation so that if people have a grudge or gripe, they can go to the Broads Authority with their complaint and have it taken seriously and something can be done about it. The spirit of the Bill, and the way in which it has been talked up and discussed, will allow that to happen. When it was introduced, such measures might not have been quite as up front as they are now, but I hope that if we get the Bill through, and if it completes its passage through the other place in the next few months, we will have a new spirit on the broads, and people will be able to enjoy that lively part of the world. It is in everyone's interests to make sure that we agree to Third Reading today.

Norman Lamb: I beg to move,
	That the Bill be read a third time upon this day six months.
	I am pleased to follow the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson). Along with the hon. Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon), I have tabled a blocking motion, having learned about parliamentary procedure as the Bill has progressed through the House. I do not know whether this is entirely the case for the hon. Member for South Norfolk, but I tabled that motion because I wanted to secure an opportunity to discuss direct elections and directly elected representationthe issue that the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) helpfully raised in his role as Chairman of the Select Committee examining the Bill. The blocking motion has ensured, too, that the Bill has received another airing in the House, which is a good thing. It is important legislation for Norfolk and the Norfolk broads, so it is right that it should receive proper parliamentary scrutiny. It is right, too, that people out there who are concerned about the Bill have their case made. Part of my contribution today will be to highlight some of the continuing concerns. As the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire pointed out, those concerns are not likely to stop the Bill in its tracks, but the authority will have to address them in its implementation of the Bill and in the exercise of its powers, in order to rebuild trust.
	There is a range of views out there about the authority and the Bill. My constituency contains a significant part of the broads area and the area covered by the Broads Authority. There are some, including some of my constituents, who feel strongly about the Bill. It is easy to dismiss people who have strong views; I dubbed them the awkward squad and I think they are now using the label as a badge of honour, but they have legitimate concerns and they should be taken seriously and listened to.

David Taylor: May I reassure the hon. Gentleman and the House that the Committee took the concerns seriously? We went through the evidence in as detailed a fashion as we could. We certainly did not recognise anyone from what he described as the awkward squad when we took evidence over the days of our sittings. We tried to do that in a thorough, professional and sensitive way.

Norman Lamb: I entirely agree, and I have no criticism of the work of the Committee.
	I shall deal with the issue of direct elections, but first I want to go through some of the continuing concerns. I should be grateful if, in his contribution, the Minister responded to some of the issues. He may want to follow that up with a letter, to amplify those points. I shall repeat as accurately as I can the concerns that have been expressed to me.
	On the boat safety scheme, the argument that is put to me is that byelaws are already in place and the Bill is not needed. Byelaws may be slower to implement, it is suggested, but they force the unelected and otherwise unaccountable Broads Authority to enter into public consultation. That is the perspective of the people who have raised their concerns with me. On insurance, they say that compulsory insurance does not need to be introduced via a private Bill. Procedures for submission of current insurance at the time of vessel registration should be sufficient.
	General and special directions are a topic that has engendered a considerable amount of debate. It revolves around the extent to which traditional freedoms are constrained by regulation and executive power. It is argued that the directions in the Bill are onerous and costly to implement. It is likely that the authority will fund the entire additional expenditure from the navigation account or toll income, thus further reducing the amount available for waterways maintenance, particularly of those parts of the system in need of dredging.
	Built into the constitution of the Broads Authority are three pillarsthe three duties of the authority to protect navigational interests, to pursue conservation and to promote tourism. There is inevitably friction between those three interests, and it is self-evidently the job of the authority to manage those tensions and to seek to ensure that they are given proper balance, but it is almost built into the structure of the organisation that there will be suspicions and battles to fight over those competing interests. The particular concern is that if it costs more money, navigation may lose out as a result.

Anne McIntosh: Before the hon. Gentleman leaves that point, I should say that I was interested in his perception that less money might be spent on the dredging of the waterways. That could have flooding implications; I know that he is worried about coastal flooding. Will he elaborate on his point before he moves on?

Norman Lamb: It is incredibly important that we maintain the resources necessary to continue the dredging work. There are real concerns among navigators, not so much about the flooding issuealthough I take the hon. Lady's pointbut about the fact that dredging work for navigation purposes could be diminished. The issue comes back to the point that the authority must balance the three interests, but must not neglect any of them. The concern expressed is that navigation could be neglected if we are not careful.

Anthony D Wright: To take the issue a step further, I should say that I understand that the people who use the broads would supply up to 30 per cent. of the total budget of the Broads Authority. The danger is that if not enough money is spent on keeping the broads clear of silt, there will be fewer navigable broads and therefore probably less income because fewer people would use them in the end. The Broads Authority might well be forced into increasing the amount of silt dredging in certain parts of the broads.

Norman Lamb: I am grateful for that intervention, which is well made. I agree with the hon. Gentleman's concern.
	I turn now to general directions. There is concern about what consultation means and whether public bodies listen to the outcomes of consultations. The point made to me is that the authority might operate the process properly, but in the end it can ignore the result of the consultation and do exactly what it originally wanted anyway. The issue comes down to trust in the authority and whether the navigators believe that their interests are being properly pursued. It is felt that there is a loss of public freedom because of unnecessarily increased control. Specific reference is made to general direction 4.6, which, it is said, allows revocation of or change to any general direction. I am told that that is an unacceptable and inappropriate additional power.
	I have been informed that the special directions restrict or prevent the free movement, anchorage or mooring of vessels. That affects the rights of the master of a vessel, the right to navigate the current extent of the navigation area, yacht racing in windy conditions and the rights, granted by the Magna Carta to all common men, to free navigation and fishing on tidal waters. Furthermore, it is said that the Bill allows a navigation officerit may not be the particular navigation officer, but the one who happens to be on duty on any particular occasionto revoke or amend a special direction at any time for any reason without justification or consultation. Again, the concern is about the potential abuse of the power that the Bill could provide.
	I have also been told that the Bill gives power to the Broads Authority to appoint a navigation officer without specifying the qualifications needed to discharge his or her duties properly. It also provides the power for any authorised person to declare any vessel unsafe without specifying the qualifications that that person must hold. There are also concerns about the powers in relation to adjacent waters: to be effective, the Bill must clearly define adjacent waters, but that is not attempted. There is no such definition in the Bill; it is down to the interpretation of officers.
	I am told that the Bill sets out to transfer responsibility for Breydon Water to the Broads Authority without provision for additional funds. There is a potential liability for substantial and ongoing maintenance costs, but the authority freely admits that today it does not have the funds for essential maintenance within its existing area.
	The hon. Member for Norwich, North referred to the agreement, which appears already to be in place and stipulates the circumstances in which and processes by which the navigation committee will be consulted by the authority. People are concerned about that. They say that the Broads Authority should be adhering to it, but at its first opportunity has failed to do so. Under the agreement, the proposal to change the navigation committee appointments system should have been referred to the committee, but it was not. Again, that comes down to the question of trust between the two sides. The navigation committee wants to ensure that there is a clear continuing statutory duty to consult it. During the Bill's evolution, the original section of the legislation that places a duty to consult the navigation committee has been removed. When the Minister winds up, I want to be absolutely sure that a clear duty to consult remains in the Bill.
	On the amendments put forward by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, there is concern about the merging of the navigation account with the general account. People say, with some justification, that that removes transparency of accounting for toll payers' funds and leaves several important points undefined, such as the year-end surplus or deficit in the navigation part of the merged account. Transparency on the use of funds, particularly toll payers' funds, is very important. People also say that changes imposed by DEFRA mean that the additional national park grant funding can no longer be directly applied to maintenance of navigation, which is unacceptable.
	People say, in summary, that the Bill changes the remit of the Broads Authority from a management role to one of controlling and restricting navigation. They also refer to the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act 1988. That is similar to the National Parks Acts, but in addition to their two primary purposes, it includes a thirdto protect the interests of navigation without, as with the National Parks Acts' Sandford principle, a mechanism for conflict resolution across all three equal responsibilities. Toll payers object to the Bill because it provides the means for an unscrupulous future Broads Authoritythey do not make that charge against the current authorityto resolve conflict by use of general and special directions to the detriment of the right to navigate: in other words, Sandford by stealth.
	Those are the continuing concerns, and it is important that they are placed on the record.

Ian Gibson: Could the hon. Gentleman tell me how many people those views represent?

Norman Lamb: I think the hon. Gentleman knows the sort of numbers we are talking about following the meeting that we held with the Broads Authority. As I said earlier, there is a range of views on the Bill. There is a body of people he knows of, and they are represented in several of our constituencies, including those of two of the Conservative Members present. A number of people care passionately about this, have ultimately good motives and have the right to have their concerns heard.
	One assumes that the Bill will become law, and it then becomes a question of the Broads Authority proving that it was wrong in its concernsthat the powers will not be abused, that they will be used properly and proportionately, and that there is an opportunity to rebuild trust between the two sides. That is why I called the meeting, and I was grateful to the chairman and chief executive of the Broads Authority for agreeing to it. It is in everyone's interests, including the objectors and petitioners, that we get to a point where trust is re-established and they feel, despite the tensions that will always exist, that the Broads Authority is doing its work properly in protecting the interests of the navigation community. One of the things that could go a substantial way to rebuilding trust is the holding of direct elections. That would create a sense of accountability for the organisation, and I shall go on to address that issue.
	I begin by quoting the Prime Minister. When he became Prime Minister, he said:
	I want to build a shared national consensus for a programme of constitutional reform that strengthens the accountability of all who hold power.
	I completely agree with that sentiment, and we could start by addressing the powers of quangos. Those bodies are ultimately not accountable to the public whom they serve. The Bill provides us with the opportunity to promote the idea of establishing greater accountability for organisations that are currently unelected and ultimately not answerable to the people whom they directly serve.
	That issue was first raised on Second Reading, and reference was made to the Scottish experience. Two national parks were established in Scotland with direct democratic representation from the start. Interestingly, they appear to be working very well. The wheels have not come off, there has not been a revolution and there appears to be a reasonable degree of interest and participation. In a report to the Broads Authority Board, at its meeting on Friday, the chief executive referred to the Scottish experience. He said that the practical arrangements for the elections appear to have worked well. Turnout in one of the two national parks was 60 per cent., and in the other it was 40 per cent., which was still above the turnout in local elections in many parts of the country. In my experience, people do care about the parks that cover their areas, particularly in Norfolk, although we must be clear that the Norfolk broads are not formally a national park.

Henry Bellingham: The hon. Gentleman's argument has a number of attractive aspects, although I feel that we need fewer elections in this country rather than more. On the other hand, we will have unitary reorganisation in Norfolk whether we like it or not, and that may well result in fewer local authorities being voted for. Even though we do not want that in my party, we may have to live with it, and it might, therefore, make sense in that context to ensure that the authority has directly elected members.

Norman Lamb: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for that intervention. I agree that what he describes may well prove to be an opportunity to address the issue properly. It may not be the only opportunity to do so, but it certainly is one of them.
	I should also refer to the fact that the regional newspaper, the  Eastern Daily Press, was very clear about the matter in its opinion column. It said that I was absolutely right about public disquiet, and I am sure that Conservative Members will appreciate that

Ian Gibson: Who elects the editor?

Norman Lamb: If I could have a little less abuse from the promoter of the Bill, it would be helpful.
	The editorial said that I was
	absolutely right about public disquiet over unelected quangos with members of the Broads Authority drawn from local authorities and by government appointment. This system though neat and cosy for those who oversee it does not greatly inspire confidence among local communities and user groups who may have little idea what (or who) is going on. And it is essential that the Broads Authority can demonstrate the broadest possible support...it would be very good indeed if as far as England's most beautiful wild places were concerned the representative principle could be pioneered here in East Anglia.
	I hope that the Under-Secretary takes on board the wise words of the  Eastern Daily Press.

James Duddridge: Although it is laudable to undertake pilots, much democratic representation on national parks is already happening in Scotland. Following our proceedings in Committee, I was contacted by several people in Scotland who said that that was working well. In many ways, such an exercise would not be piloting something new but following best practice in other parts of the country, where it has been successful.

Norman Lamb: I am not sure whether the hon. Gentleman has just arrived, but I had made the point about Scotland. However, I am grateful for the intervention and he is right to say that the experience appears to be positive. The critical issue from the authority's point of view is that it has not caused problems in the administration of those national parks, but given local communities a direct say in it.
	It is fair to point out that there are several different interests in a national park. One is a broad national interest. I fully accept the case for national nominees on a national park board or the Broads Authority board. That is legitimate. However, it is also legitimate for the communities in the area of a national park or the Broads Authority to have a direct say in the decision-making process. The interests that they want to promote may be parochial, but they should be considered as part of the overall mix in making decisions.

Anne McIntosh: The problem exists in all national parks, where there is a conflict of interest between those on the national park authority who have a business in the park and those who have a business outside the park, and may therefore have a vested interest in willing a business in the park to succeed or fail. Is the hon. Gentleman happy with the 20 per cent. figure? Does he believe that it is a step in the right direction? Is he happy to leave it to the House and the other place to decide whether to adopt the Scottish scenario? What has he concluded?

Norman Lamb: Is the hon. Lady referring to 20 per cent. of the board being directly elected? Perhaps she could clarify what she meant.

Anne McIntosh: I understand that one of the recommendations of the little Select Committee report of the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) is that 20 per cent. of the national park authority will be up for election.

Norman Lamb: I am afraid I am not in a position to respond to that. However, I believe that 20 per cent. of the boards of the national parks in Scotland is directly elected. I have an open mind about the exact percentage to be directly elected. I realise that the local communities are just part of the group of interests that should be properly represented in the democratic process. I have suggested that two or three members of the board should be directly elected, but of course that depends on the size of the board.

Anne McIntosh: For hon. Members' information, paragraph 11 of the special report, which the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire and others drafted, states:
	We note that the National Parks (Scotland) Act 2000 set out in its framework for the constitution of a National Park that a minimum of 20 per cent. of members of the National Park Authority were to be elected in a poll by those on the local government electoral register within the Park area.
	I am simply asking whether the hon. Gentleman agrees with that recommendation.

Norman Lamb: Absolutely. We are talking about the same thing20 per cent. of the board of the two national parks in Scotland is directly elected. I would like something along those lines to be established in the Norfolk broads.
	We have developed quite a consensus on the issue. It is interesting that the principle of direct elections is supported by both the promoter of the Bill and the Conservatives. Indeed, the principle of introducing direct representation on the board is supported throughout the House, and I am not aware of anyone opposing it when it was raised in Norfolk.
	The Broads Authority board meets this Friday and will consider a paper from the chief executive that deals with the principle of direct elections, as I mentioned earlier. There is no specific recommendation to support the principle; rather, there is an open recommendation to consider the report. However, I hope that the board will send out a clear signal on Friday that it supports the principle of direct elections, which, above all else, it would be in its own interests to do. Doing so would be a demonstration of self-confidence rather than defensiveness and would remove from the board the slur that it is an unaccountable quango.
	The Minister has an opportunity today to indicate whether he supports the principle. I suspect that we might risk entering into a long-winded consultation with all the other national parks before any decision is taken. I urge the Minister to consider whether it is worth experimenting in England. We have an ideal opportunity to do so through the Broads Authority, which can be distinguished from the national parks, because it is not in fact a national park. We can try the principle of direct democratic representation on the Broads Authority and see what lessons are learned in a few years' time. At that stage it might be appropriate to extend the principle to other national parks. They might choose to proceed earlier than that. If they did so, I would be delighted. However, I do not want inertia on the part of other national parks to delay the opportunity to develop an important principle.
	How can we achieve that? The first option, which I favour, is to achieve it through the Bill. I am told that it is impossible to amend the Bill at this stage to introduce direct elections. If that is the case, regrettably I must accept that. However, I should also like to ensure that the idea does not disappear into the long grass, never to be seen again. I want the principle to be pursued.
	There are two other options that I should like the Minister to consider and respond to. First, is it possible by way of an order, rather than primary legislation, to introduce a principle whereby a proportion of the Secretary of State's nominees would be elected by local people and would then become the appointees of the Secretary of State? Could we use the existing mechanism to introduce direct elections? The attraction of that option is that it could be done much more speedily than having to wait for primary legislation.
	The other option is that which the hon. Member for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) put forward in his intervention, whereby we use the opportunity of local government reorganisation, which we are told is likely to be imposed on Norfolk in a couple of years' time, to introduce direct elections. Local government reorganisation would inevitably result in a change to the make-up of the Broads Authority board, because there will be fewer local authorities, and would therefore be an ideal moment. That would create a massive challenge for the Government, because it would require two Departments to work together, but I am sure that the challenge can be met and the opportunity seized.
	In summary, the Bill contains important elements that should go on to the statute book. No doubt it will proceed to the House of Lords today, where it should be scrutinised. It is important that those who oppose it have the opportunity to continue their case, but let us use this opportunity to progress the case for direct representation.
	Would a move towards direct elections provide an opportunity to streamline the board? I understand that the board is larger than those of other national parks, but that might not be the case. It has been suggested to me that a new board could be made up of 15 people, with seven being appointed nationally by the Secretary of State. The rest of the board could be made up of three representatives from local authorities, three directly elected representativesone of those local representatives should, perhaps, be a direct representative of the parish councils within the area, because they have a stakeand two representatives of the navigation interest. That is one possible model. I do not particularly favour it, but it should be considered. We want a board that is workable and of a reasonable size, but we want the mix to be right. There should be local democratic representation, and other relevant interests should be represented.
	It has been good to debate these issues further, and I very much hope that the Minister will give a clear signal that he supports the principle of direct elections to the board.

Richard Bacon: The hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) has covered these matters in exhaustive, not to say exhausting, detail, so I shall try to be brief. I placed a blocking motion on the Order Paper because, like him, I thought that these issues should be aired. Matters that are important to our constituents should not simply go through the House on the nod.
	I feel at best lukewarm about the Bill, partly because of the local government review, which has been mentioned. If restructuring is being considered, which it isI hope that that does not happen, and I do not believe that it is inevitablethere is a strong argument that we should just wait to see what happens and incorporate the Bill into that. The authority's composition is obviously going to change at some point, and Parliament will need to return to this issue either through that local government legislation or through other means, such as a specific piece of extra legislation, so there is an argument for waiting until then.
	The Committee has done good and thorough work on the Bill, and I congratulate the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) on that. I also congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson) on promoting the Bill as he has done. I shall not oppose its Third Reading, and I think that the House should allow it to proceed. However, it is important that we allow the views of those who oppose it to be aired and placed on the record, not least so that if those views, however alarmist or lurid they might seem, should later prove to have been justified, there will be something to refer back to. If necessary, we could revisit the issue with new legislation.
	It is worth stressing the point about national parks, because several hon. Members have talked about national parks as though the broads area were one, but it is notas the hon. Member for North Norfolk correctly pointed out. There is a reason for that, which is clear from looking at the National Parks and Access to the Countryside Act 1949 and Lord Sandford's review of national parks in the early 1970s. National parks have two basic purposes: conservation of the natural environment and providing the public with access to those areas. If there is a conflict between those aimsor, I should say, if it is not possible by skilful management to reconcile themconservation should come first. However, the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act 1988 makes it clear that there are three purposes for the authority:
	conserving and enhancing the natural beauty of the Broads...promoting the enjoyment of the Broads by the public...and protecting the interests of navigation.
	So, from the Act's inception, it has always been agreed that protecting the interests of navigation was an explicit statutory principle that, because of the Sandford principles, excluded the possibility of the Broads Authority being a national park.
	The central fear underlying the concerns that have been expressed to us and to the Committee by petitioners, is that, as a result of the Bill, navigation could be compromised and could end up taking a back seat to conservation and wildlife, when in fact the ever-present need to balance all these factors is precisely why the broads are not a national park.

Ian Gibson: What is the hon. Gentleman's view of the strength of the navigation committee to advise and to promote ideas about navigation to the Broads Authority?

Richard Bacon: The navigation committee has an extremely important role to play, and I fear that the Broads Authority has not exactly covered itself in glory by the way in which it has proposed changes to the committee's membership. In fact, it is fair to say that the Broads Authority was a little careless, to put it kindly, to have acted in such a way that it now finds that many navigators do not trust it. I know that the authority has gone some way towards allaying the navigators' concerns. The hon. Member for North Norfolk mentioned the Royal Yachting Association, the British Marine Federation and the Inland Waterways Association.
	However, the hon. Gentleman did not mention the Norfolk and Suffolk Boating Association or the Norfolk Broads Yacht Cluband for good reason. Although discussions took place with the Norfolk and Suffolk Boating Association, it has expressed certain fears since the Committee chaired by the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire met. I should like to quote one of the petitioners, Mr. Philip Ollier, the executive secretary of the Norfolk and Suffolk Boating Association. In an e-mail this year, he wrote:
	In September 2007, the Broads Authority Chief Executive brought forward proposals to alter the way appointments are made to the Navigation Committee.
	It is worth noting that that was written in September, after the Committee of the House had considered the Bill. Mr. Ollier goes on to say:
	Previously eight places on the committee were allocated to persons nominated by bodies representing the various navigation interests.
	The charge made is that
	The process will be open to manipulation by the BA Executive and follows similar changes that have been implemented to reduce the representation of navigation interests on the Broads Authority itself. Given the changes to the composition of the Navigation Committee, the assurances obtained in the negotiations about the Bill start to look less reliable.
	A constituent of mine, Mr. Graham Trimmer from Poringland, has expressed his fears in even more colourful terms. Referring to the issue of public safety, he said:
	the Chairman of the Broads Authority appears to suggest...that the Bill is only about public safety. This is a smokescreen, since adequate byelaws were enacted and came into force in April last year, allowing for the enforcement of a comprehensive boat safety scheme.
	I have spoken to some of the people in my constituency who own boats, and some of them have told me that they would not be able to get a licence from the Broads Authority had they not already been through the process of getting a boat safety certificate.
	These are examples of people's concerns about the Bill. I fear that the way in which the authority has conducted itselfeven to the extent of supposedly entering into legal agreements with the concerned bodieshas, in the words of the Committee, created a legal ambiguity, and perhaps created more problems than it has solved. When I first heard about the legal agreements that were being entered into, I wondered how it was possible to enter into such an agreement with a third party in relation to a Bill that had not yet been passed. I wondered what possible effect those agreements could have in law, in terms of the subsequent powers of the authority, given that the Bill had not yet been passed. Indeed, the Committee appears to agree about that. Paragraph 9 of its report to the House states:
	It is our view that such agreements would not have any legal effect as they could not be seen to fetter the discretion given to the Authority in the legislation once the Bill was enacted.
	I will not dwell on the issue of direct elections, as it has already been referred to, save to comment that it is a sensible principle to explore. Where an authority has planning powers, as this one does, it seems quite wrong that there should be no directly elected input if a way can be found to achieve that.
	I fear that the authority's approach has not enabled the House to give it the warm cross-party endorsement that it might otherwise have had, and serious concerns among our constituents remain. That said, there will be further opportunities in the other place. As the hon. Member for North Norfolk said, the ultimate test will be the behaviour of the authority in interpreting and using its powers in the years ahead. If the fears of the navigators prove justified, we will know soon enough, and we will have the opportunity to do something about it in due course.

Keith Simpson: I will try to keep my comments brief. The Bill was blocked last year by my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) and myselfnot to destroy it, but to enable the fears of some of our constituents to be aired on the Floor of the House. Many of the issues have already been well presented by the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb), who steered the Bill through the Commons, and by other colleagues. I shall not go over all the detail again.
	It is ironic that we are now 20 years on from the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads BillI emphasise the term Suffolkthat was steered through the House by my predecessor, Richard Ryder, now Lord Ryder of Wensum. As a consequence of our previous debates, the first and now the second blocking motion, the work of the Committee and the Bill's consideration in the other place, it is hoped that the relevant issues will be addressed. I remind you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that the very nature of the Bill has changed. The original conception was to establish the broads as a national park, but that Bill had to be withdrawn for lots of reasons. One is that the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act 1988 was legislation for navigation, so establishing the broads as a national park would cause all kinds of problems, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk said.
	The Norfolk and Suffolk broads are a hybrid. That is the key issue; in many respects, they are a one-off. I shall not deal with detailed issues of navigation, as my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk has already done so. We aired those issues widely in our debate of a year ago. I want to touch on another issue that was raised then and has been raised again today by the hon. Member for North Norfolkthe whole business of having some directly elected members on the board. I am not going to go into the different permutations of how it might be done. I am almost surprised that an alternative vote system was not proposed, but the key issue is a matter of principle. Ironically, it is more important today than it was when we debated it in April. It is crucial, because local people feel that they should be represented on a board and able to affect their communities, their livelihoods, and the nature of the broads itself, directly.
	Many of us were in Westminster Hall yesterday morning to participate in a debate that I was fortunate enough to obtain on flood defences in Norfolk. One of the issues raised there was that various Government advisory boards could put forward proposals that would have a direct impact on communities in north and mid-Norfolk. Ultimately, actions over the next 50 years or beyond could change the very nature of the broads, but I am not going to go down that path in any more detail. However, the fact that local communities feel they do not have a say is of fundamental importance, and all Norfolk Members seized upon that.
	Two Members raised another important point. The boundary committee is looking into unitary authority reorganisation in Norfolk. The hon. Member for North Norfolk and my hon. Friends the Members for South Norfolk and for North-West Norfolk (Mr. Bellingham) suggested that as a consequence of the committee's work there could very well be changes in the make-up of local government in Norfolk. Interestingly, paragraph 3.1 of the proposals that will go before the committee later this week says:
	Although the Broads Authority is not included in the review, clearly the likely reduction in the number of constituent local authorities will lead to a further change.
	The assumption that this will go through is a big assumption, not least becausethis directly relates to the representation on the Broads Authoritythere is no way in which the people of Norfolk can make their views clear about any possible reorganisation of local government in Norfolk. Consultations and stakeholders are mentioned, but there is no way in which the people can make their views clear. Whatever line one takes on whether there should be unitary authorities, it is unarguably the case that there has been no test of public opinion. That reinforces the view of many people in Norfolk that there should be directly elected representatives on the Broads Authority. I agree with the hon. Member for North Norfolk that all the advice we receive is that the Bill cannot be amended to provide for that. We know that the Minister will consider this issue, and, given that the Norfolk and Suffolk broads are a hybrid, I urge him to think of a way in which the natural concerns of Members and our constituents can be met.

Anthony D Wright: Is there not an opportunity, however? The test will come on Friday when the Broads Forum meets to discuss this point. It will then have to be discussed in the other place, and this House could send a strong message to the other place that we have a watching brief on this particular point, and we hope that it will listen.

Keith Simpson: I thank the hon. Gentleman for his commenthe, too, has a direct interest in this matterand he is right. There is no doubt that several Members in the other place will take note of this, and will raise it. The Broads Authority has had to take note of our previous debates, and I hope it will also take note of the issues we have raised today.

Ian Gibson: Is the hon. Gentleman aware that although it is true that the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act 1988 does not allow for direct elections, there areI am toldprovisions within it whereby local authorities can change, which would take away the heat about unitary status?

Keith Simpson: Yes; as I have said, there are different permutations for doing that. One of the depressing aspects of the debate on this issue, dating back now over a year, is what appeared to be the reluctance of the Broads Authority to go down this path on the grounds that it would all be too difficult. That is key. The Broads Authorityand politicians in opposition and in governmentought to recognise the following point, in relation not only to this subject but to many others: the public are no longer prepared to have largely unelected bodies telling them what to do in matters that directly affect their local communities. They want direct representation on such bodies. I agree that we can look into how to achieve it, but that is the major point I want to put to the Minister. Although there are slight differences within the Norfolk political community about how to get there, we all agree upon that.
	I recognise that the Bill will go through to the other place, and I hope that when the Minister winds up he will take note of what I have said and what colleagues have said, in the knowledge that when it reaches the other place, many of their lordships may display strong feelings about it.

Anne McIntosh: It is both interesting and an honour to participate in this good and stimulating debate. I congratulate the hon. Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson), on promoting the Bill, and the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor), although he is absent. Obviously, the hon. Member for North Norfolk (Norman Lamb) has been the most affected by this matter, but I took some comfort from the clarity with which my hon. Friends the Members for South Norfolk (Mr. Bacon) and for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) explained some of the issues.
	My hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk, in particular, set out most clearly what the purposes and functions of the Bill and the Broads Authority are. I believe he said that there are three purposes: to conserve and enhance the natural beauty of the broads; to enhance the enjoyment of the broads; and to protect the interests of navigation on the broads. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk on securing yesterday's excellent Adjournment debate in order to discuss what an amenity the broads are, and what enjoyment they provide nationally; we are not just talking about the community of Norfolk and Suffolkpredominately Norfolkbut the larger community. Those things could be put at risk.
	The Bill will update the Norfolk and Suffolk Broads Act 1988, giving the Broads Authority various new powers. The Bill will combine the navigation and general accounts into one. It will enable the authority to do, among other things, the following: to apply effectively the national boat safety scheme to reduce the risk of fire and explosion; to introduce compulsory third-party insurance for boats in its area; to license hire boats; to give the Haddiscoe Cut a public right of navigation; to make possible the transfer of responsibility for the navigation on Breydon Water from the Great Yarmouth port authority; to make a voluntary agreement to manage water skiing and to distinguish between water skiing and wakeboarding so they can be managed separately; to control pollution from boats; to remove the requirement for a separate Norwich navigation officer; and to widen the range of bodies involved in the appointment of members to the authority by the Secretary of State. As the hon. Member for North Norfolk said, real safety issues are involved.
	Perhaps this is an opportune moment to record my interest in this matter. I always try to attend boat shows whenever possible. Two years ago, I was fortunate enough to go to the Southampton boat show, and over the past year or two I have been fortunate enough to attend the London boat show. It is magnificent to see some of the vessels that ply the broads and the impact that boat building has on the whole of East Anglia. As I represented Essex North East and Essex North and Suffolk South in the European Parliament for 10 years, I regularly visited some of the boat builders, who contribute hugely to the local economy. We should not lose sight of that fact.
	This is a good opportunity not only to congratulate the sponsor of the Bill, who moved the Third Reading eloquently, but to have regard to a number of the issues that have been raised and were objected to earlier. I pay tribute to colleagues who served on the Committee on the Broads Authority Bill, not only the hon. Member for North-West Leicestershire, whom I mentioned, but my hon. Friend the Member for Preseli Pembrokeshire (Mr. Crabb), my hon. Friend the Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge), who has become quite an expert in these matters, and the hon. Member for Paisley and Renfrewshire, North (Jim Sheridan). As a number of hon. Members have said, we should recognise that many of the concerns have been translated into amendments that have been incorporated into the Bill.
	All hon. Members who have spoken mentioned democratic accountability. I represent only a small section of the North Yorkshire Moors national park, so I am not a great authority on it, butas the hon. Member for North Norfolk saidon some occasions those who serve in the public interest in that regard plough a lonely furrow.
	The special report concluded that while the Bill should be allowed to proceed, several caveats were raised in Committee and were set out in the report. The promoter of the Bill tabled several amendments, and the one that is outstanding relates to the lack of democratic accountability. In paragraph 10, the Committee concluded forcefully that, in its view
	the Broads Authority and local people would benefit from the provision for direct elections to the Authority with a view to ensuring that the principle of direct representation of local community interests should be guaranteed. This would ensure that the Authority could be held to account and that there was a democratic means of moderating the powers enacted within the Bill.
	I listened carefully to what my hon. Friend the Member for South Norfolk said. My hon. Friend the Member for Mid-Norfolk also recorded his view that the public will have no truck with bodies that do not have some form of electoral representation and democratic accountability. We cannot emphasise that forcefully enough.
	My main question for the Minister, with regard to paragraphs 10 and 11 of the special report and having heard the views expressed so eloquently today, is whether he will give the House an assurance that the Government are minded to table an amendment in the other place at an early stage to address that omission from the Bill. We have heard about that omission from the sponsor and from other hon. Members in this debate. The sponsorthe hon. Member for Norwich, Northsaid that a compromise appears to have been reached on the model in Scotland. Is that the model that the Minister will follow?
	We wish to give the Bill a fair wind today, but we respect the caveats that were raised by the Committee. We take heed of those issues that have been raised today, and we should have regard to the fact that the broads have a unique place in the affections of the British, as well as in the local economy. Does the Minister believe that all three functionsthe general and special directions to vessels, the insurance questions and the appeals procedureare all set out clearly in the Bill? Is he satisfied that there is a balance between the three functions I mentioned earlierto conserve and enhance the natural beauty of the broads, to enhance the enjoyment of the broads, and to protect the interests of navigation?
	One final issue concerns the licensing of rescue boats. While the Committee was agreeable to that being removed from the Bill, for the reasons of safety that several hon. Members have mentioned, could the Minister put our minds at rest about whether that issue will be considered in the other place?
	I take great heart from the debate today, having seen in my own area how planning issues work in national parks. It is absolutely right that democracy should be seen to work. People should be seen to have a voice and a say. If they were to elect a proportion of those who serve on the Broads Authority, and if they did not like what they did, they could remove them when they were due for re-election. At the moment, that is not possible. If the Minister could explain to us where he and his Department think that they are going on that, we would make great progress.
	I have enjoyed listening to the arguments, as I did not participate in previous proceedings. In its own way, the Bill is important. I completely understand the reasons for which my hon. Friends sought to object to the Bill. I understand not only that proceedings have been going on since the original Bill in 1988, but that people have been trying to move proceedings forward on this Bill since 2003. It is incumbent on us to make progress today, as the hon. Member for Norwich, North said, but it is also incumbent on the Minister to set out how he will proceed, particularly on the question of direct elections to the authority.

Jonathan R Shaw: I begin by congratulating my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North (Dr. Gibson), the sponsor of the Bill, on how he put the arguments and presented the discussions, both in the House and outside it in the various communities in and around the Norfolk and Suffolk broads. I thank all hon. Members from both sides of the House, as it has been a measured debate in which people have expressed concerns on behalf of their constituents, as is right.
	It is also important for us to appreciate the general nature of the broads and of national parks. The broads are part of the national parks family and every citizen in this nation has a stake in those wonderful areas. The work undertaken by many members of those authorities is appreciated. People work hard in the interest of those authorities, and they take their responsibilities seriously. We are grateful for their efforts.
	I endorse the comments made by my predecessor on Second Reading. As the Minister responsible for the national parks and the broads, I confirm that the Government remain firmly supportive of the aims of the Broads Authority Bill. Let me emphasise the wider support given to the broads. The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs was able to announce a three-year funding settlement in 2008-09, which gave the Norfolk broads 4.304 million poundsa cash increase of 115 per cent. over the past 10 years. Our commitment is on the record. That amount will rise to 4.4 million by 2010-11 and further in the future. We will also provide special grants of 500,000 for 2008-09 and 400,000 for 2009-10 and 2010-11, which will specifically enable the authority to implement its sediment restoration strategy and restore the broads' ecosystems. The authority has taken direct control of dredging the rivers and broads, a move that it is anticipated will enable it to achieve 25 per cent. more dredging than last year for the same amount of money. That is good news for toll payers and for taxpayers.
	I am aware that the Bill has already been the subject not only of an earlier debate but of scrutiny by the Select Committee. My hon. Friend the Member for North-West Leicestershire (David Taylor) is no longer in his seat, but all hon. Members have paid tribute to him and to the members of the Committee for the good service that they gave to the House through that process. It is not surprising that any changes to our most protected landscapes will invariably raise concerns, but I am delighted that we are in general agreement on both sides of the House. It is right, is it not, that we should raise concerns about such wonderful landscapes? Hon. Members have said that the Bill should be subject to scrutiny. I endorse those remarks.
	The main aim of the Bill is to improve safety on the broads, through measures that include the licensing of hire craft, compulsory third-party insurance and improvements to the way in which the Broads Authority operates. The introduction of the boat safety scheme is already ensuring that vessels are properly maintained. British Waterways and the Environment Agency already operate the scheme successfully, and I congratulate the Broads Authority on the measures that it has taken to bring the broads into line with the other major navigation authorities.
	I am aware that some people consider that the Bill's safety provisions could be dealt with through byelaws, but I do not agree. It would be impossible to use byelaws to introduce compulsory insurance, as it would be too cumbersome to amend them each time there was a change in standards.
	I turn now to some of the questions raised in the debate, after which I shall deal with the subject of direct elections. The hon. Member for North Norfolk asked various questions about insurance, but I think that I answered them all earlier. The proposal to merge the general and navigation funds is a technical measure, and the Bill ensures that the Broads Authority will give a clear account of what has been spent on navigation and on other purposes.
	The hon. Member for North Norfolk also asked about the duty of the Broads Authority to consult the navigation committee. In its latest form, the Bill does not remove that duty. He also asked about the right of free navigation. That was included in one of the petitions to the Committee, which considered that the powers were necessary. The hon. Gentleman was concerned that protecting the interests of navigation could result in Sandford by stealth, but it will not. The broads' three purposes remain as set out in the 1988 Act, and this Bill does not change that.
	The hon. Member for North Norfolk also asked about the boat safety scheme. As I said, it would be too cumbersome to use byelaws for that purpose, as the Department would have to approve each amendment to them. He asked about changes to the navigation revenue account, which now returns to what it was before 2005-06. Some dredging can be for purposes other than navigation.
	Some concern has been expressed about the relationship between the Broads Authority and communities in the area. The hon. Member for Mid-Norfolk (Mr. Simpson) was especially interested in that and, as he said, the true test will be how the Broads Authority is judged to have used that relationship. Important safeguards in that respect are in place: the Broads Authority is accountable to the Audit Commission and to the local government ombudsman, and the broads forum is another way of keeping it in touch with local user groups.
	The hon. Member for North Norfolk began his discussion of direct elections by quoting a newspaper that agreed with him. Perhaps he issued a press release saying that the  Eastern Daily Press agreed with him and the newspaper printed that, but it was interesting to hear a Liberal Democrat speaking in favour of a first-past-the-post system. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will clarify whether he is in favour of that system for the Broads Authority. It is a very important point.

Norman Lamb: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way, although there is a danger of my going off on what is a hobbyhorse of mine. The principle is that a direct election should be held for the Broads Authority, but how it is done is a subject for a separate discussion. I always favour a fair voting systemunlike those who belong to the other two main parties here.

Jonathan R Shaw: There we are; that did not take a great deal of scratching beneath the surface, did it? So the Liberal Democrats want proportional representation to be used in elections to the Broads Authority. That is a perfectly honourable position to take, and it is consistent with his party's line. Some Members in my party support proportional representation, too. I do not, and I do not think that anyone in the Conservative party does. That shows that we will need to look at the issue and reach a conclusion.

James Duddridge: Will the Minister give way?

Jonathan R Shaw: Perhaps the hon. Gentleman is in favour of proportional representation.

James Duddridge: I think the Minister will find that I am not. This is interesting banter, but the use of proportional representation would imply that the voting will be partisan, and that is certainly not my impression. Is the Minister expecting parties to put up candidates for the elections? Surely that should not be encouraged, and I am not sure that that has been the experience north of the border.

Jonathan R Shaw: We have opened a can of worms. I will come on to the detail, but I point out to the hon. Gentleman that I have discussions with members of authorities from across the country. I would not know which political party they belonged to unless I asked them directly, because they put their park, or the broads, first. People put being an authority member first. I have never heard of party politics coming into the situation in relation to either the Broads Authority or one of the park authorities.

Norman Lamb: I completely agree with the point that the hon. Member for Rochford and Southend, East (James Duddridge) made; one would expect the elections to be entirely non-party political. That has been the experience in Scotland. I would like a clear indication of whether the Minister supports the principle of direct elections to the authority.

Jonathan R Shaw: I am coming to that point. In the case of the two national parks in Scotlandthe Cairngorms national park and the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs national parka percentage of authority members are directly elected. That appears to work well. I do not want us to lose the opportunity to have that discussion. It has been suggested that such a scheme be piloted in the broads, but we know that the process has worked well in Scotland, so one could say that there has already been a pilot.
	I want to look at the issue across the piece, because it is not only the Broads Authority that is affected. I want to understand the views of the other park authorities in England, and the views of the many people who have an interest in our national parks. The parks are not just local; they are national treasures. My constituents in Chatham have as much right to a say on how the parks are formed as someone who lives in the Lake district, for example.

Anne McIntosh: I hope that the Minister is not procrastinating. A simple way forward would be to have a short consultation, and for the results to be published. I do not want to pre-empt what he has to say, but I am sure that all the national parks would wish to be consulted, as he rightly says. Having sensed the mood of the House this afternoon, I detect that there is strong feeling. I think that hon. Members would like to know what will happen when the Bill leaves this place today.

Jonathan R Shaw: As a number of hon. Members have said, the Bill is not the appropriate vehicle to change the constitution of the Broads Authority. As I have signalled, I want to look at this across the piece to take account of the other national parks in England. I will therefore issue a consultation on the future of the constitution and the composition of the Broads Authority and other park authorities in England. I will advise the House when I intend do so. There will not be long delays, and I hope that I can issue something over the summer period.

Keith Simpson: Following the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Vale of York (Miss McIntosh), I hope that that can be done reasonably quickly, because we have been debating the measure for over a year. I recognise that the Department's views have changed and moved, which I welcome, but will the Minister bear two things in mind? First, at the end of the day, the Norfolk broads are not a national park: they are a strange hybrid. I accept that, from his point of view, it might set a precedent, but I urge him to move as quickly as possible. Secondly, the broads are a national treasure, and his constituents have every right to be represented, but my constituents and those of other hon. Members from Norfolk have an extra right, because this directly affects them, their livelihoods and, indeed, their future. If there is a waitand we could end up discussing numbersmay I remind the Minister that we are not talking about such representation having anything more than a small minority on the board?

Jonathan R Shaw: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. The broads are a national treasure, and the people who live around them are affected, as are their livelihoods and businesses. The same applies to all the national parks. The Peak district has the largest population of any national park within its boundaries, and 20 million people visit the Lake district. I want to look at this in the broadest sense.

Henry Bellingham: A Freudian slip.

Jonathan R Shaw: It was not a Freudian slip, or an attempt at a joke, but I am glad that it has amused the hon. Gentleman [ Interruption. ] He is a fine fellow. I visited his constituency, and he was a gracious host.

Anne McIntosh: I am sorry to test the Minister's patience. The news of the consultation is welcome, but will he consult on the proportion of representatives who will be up for election? There is a ballpark figure in the paragraph to which I referred of 20 per cent., but will he consult on whether it should be 20 per cent. or 30 per cent., and what the composition of the elected body should be?

Jonathan R Shaw: I cannot tell the hon. Lady the detail of the consultation, but the percentage of directly elected members is clearly something that we will consider carefully for inclusion in the consultation. I hope that that provides hon. Members with some comfort.

Richard Bacon: Will the Minister clarify his view on paragraph 9 of the Select Committee report, in which the Committee members state that in their view the legal agreements would not be binding?

Jonathan R Shaw: I do not have the details to hand, but I will drop the hon. Gentleman a note, and we will make sure that a copy is placed in the Library so that Members considering the Bill in another place are aware of the answer.

Norman Lamb: I am grateful to the Minister for giving way yet again. Will he look specifically at the possibility of using local government reorganisation in two years' time as a mechanism? Primary legislation will be in place at that point. I appreciate that a different Department is involved, but it is an obvious opportunity to achieve reform, which would be very much welcomed in Norfolk.

Jonathan R Shaw: The hon. Gentleman knows that I cannot give him that commitment, but his comments are on the record and I am sure that my hon. Friends in the Department for Communities and Local Government will take note.
	I hope I have provided hon. Members with some comfort. There will be a consultation. I am relaxed about the proposal. As hon. Members noted, similar projects have been successful in Scotland and I have had discussions with various members of the boards of national parks and the broads. We all treasure the broads and our national parks. We need to get the arrangements right, and as was pointed out, things change over time. It is important that we respond to the concerns and the accountability wishes of the people of this country.
	I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Norwich, North, the proposer of the Bill. It is a reasonable and proportionate Bill. I congratulate the authority. There has been extensive consultation and although not everyone agreed, great efforts were made over a considerable time. I hope that we have been able to address people's concerns, particularly on the issue that has preoccupied the House most this afternoonelections. I commend the Bill to the House.

Ian Gibson: May I associate myself with many of the remarks that have been made

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Order. The hon. Gentleman needs the leave of the House to contribute again.

Ian Gibson: With the leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker. The only reason that I took up the Bill was that it involved safety issues. It is so important that we have legislation covering the safety of the public across the nation who use facilities such as football grounds, shopping centres or the broads.
	During the debate on the Bill we have developed some good ideas, which are beginning to circulate. I am glad that support is coming through, and I have no hard feelings towards those who objected for so long. When they have had the chance, they have been quite positive about some aspects, and we should be grateful for that. One or two issues have been misunderstood and I hope they will be ironed out in the other place. For example, there has been agreement that navigation money from river tolls or broads tolls cannot be used other than for navigational purposes. Such matters need to be clarified.
	Another important feature of the Bill is that an independent arbitrator can be set up, with an appeals process to deal with complaints such as those that we heard from hon. Members on the Opposition Benches.
	I am pleased that there has been interaction. There is no doubt that when Norfolk people get together, things begin to happen. That is Norfolk soul, and we have seen evidence of that over the past year. Hopefully, the Bill will proceed quickly through the other place and we will maintain a broads facility that is second to none. When people use the facilities there, they will do so in safety and we will have none of the calamities and deaths that we have seen over the years.
	I thank everybody who has participatedcolleagues in all parts of the House and the Minister. I particularly thank the DEFRA officials who advised us on how to change some of the complicated provisions, and I am sure they will continue to do that.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Bill accordingly read the Third time, and passed.
	 Sitting suspended , pursuant to Order [29 April].
	 On resuming

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 15 (Exempted business),
	That, at this day's sitting, consideration of any Lords Messages that may be received may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour. [Mr. Alan Campbell.]
	 Question agreed to.

DELEGATED LEGISLATION

Church of England Marriage Measure

Ordered,
	That the Church of England Marriage Measure, which was laid before this House on 30th April, be referred to a Delegated Legislation Committee. [ Mr. Alan Campbell .]

Mr. Deputy Speaker: With the leave of the House, I shall put together the motions relating to trade descriptions and consumer protection.
	 Motion made, and Question put forthwith, pursuant to Standing Order No. 118 (6) (Standing Committees on Delegated Legislation) ,

Trade Descriptions

That the draft Business Protection from Misleading Marketing Regulations 2008, which were laid before this House on 3rd March, be approved.

Consumer Protection

That the draft Consumer Protection from Unfair Trading Regulations 2008, which were laid before this House on 3rd March, be approved. [ Mr. Alan Campbell . ]
	 Question agreed to.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: I must now suspend the sitting of the House until such time as will be advised on the Annunciator.
	 Sitting suspended, pursuant to Order [29 April].

Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill

Lords Message considered.

Mr. Deputy Speaker: Under the order of the House of 6 May, any message from the Lords relating to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill may be considered forthwith without any Question put.
	I have to acquaint the House that a message has been brought from the Lords as follows. The Lords insist on certain amendments to the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill to which the Commons have disagreed for which insistence they assign their Reasons; they do not insist on the remaining amendments to which the Commons have disagreed; they agree to the amendments which the Commons have proposed to the words restored to the Bill; they agree to the consequential amendment which the Commons have proposed; they agree to the amendments which the Commons have proposed in lieu of certain of their amendments; and they agree to the amendments which the Commons have proposed to certain of their amendments.
	 Lords reasons: 9B, 301B and 327B.

David Hanson: I beg to move, That this House does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendments Nos. 9, 301 and 327.
	We had a full debate yesterday on the question of suspended sentence orders, and there was some discussion between the main parties and the Liberal Democrats on this matter. Obviously, I regret the fact that the other place has voted in the way that it has, but there is clearly a big disagreement between the two Houses.
	I am firmly of the view that the impact of the clause was positive, but a number of points have been made by the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) and the hon. Member for Cambridge (David Howarth), and also by such august bodies as the Magistrates Association, and what they have said, coupled with the reflection we have had from the Lords, means that we will not press this issue to a Division this evening.
	Members know that we are addressing key issues in relation to the prison officers' right-to-strike provisions, which expire under the joint industrial relations procedural arrangement tomorrow8 May. I have always had the intention of getting this Bill to Royal Assent by 8 May, and I feel that if we press this issue this evening we will severely complicate those matters. Therefore, I propose that we do not insist on the disagreement with the Lords, and I hope that the hon. and learned Member for Harborough, for whom I have had great regard during the passage of the Bill, and the hon. Member for Cambridge, will accept that with the good grace that I know they have within them.

Edward Garnier: I am delighted that the Government have accepted the advice of the other place. I know it is not always easy for a Government with a majority in this House to accept such advice on all occasions, but the other place can proudly claim to have exercised its constitutional role properly on this occasion, by inviting a Government to take advice. They have clearly listened to the advice of the other place. I claim no credit for any part in the Government's decision making; we have all had to do what we have had to do. It happens that the House of Lords' advice coincides with the remarks that I have been making, but that is a coincidence.
	I thank the right hon. Gentleman, the Secretary of State and the Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle), for the constructive view that they have taken on this proposal, and I invite the House, including my right hon. and hon. Friends, to accept the concession that the Government have made this evening in the face of the advice of the other place. I ask us all to allow clause 10 to be deleted from the Bill.

David Howarth: Earlier in the day, I had the intense embarrassment of hearing the remarks I made on this matter yesterday cited with approval by not only the Liberal Democrat spokesman in the Lords but the Minister there.
	I should reiterate what I was saying yesterday just for one purpose. Clause 10 was trying to deal with a problem that exists not just in respect of summary offences in the magistrates court, but in the Crown courtperhaps to an even greater degreeand in the magistrates court in respect of offences that are triable either way. The Government need to think about a holistic solution to the problem, not just a solution to one particular part of it, because by trying to resolve the problem in parts they threatened to cause a certain amount of confusion in the courts.
	Another problem was raised in the Lords, where a fair point was made by Lady Butler-Sloss. The Government's solution was to say, Perhaps we will implement this clause and then unimplement it. However, that would mean excessive change for the magistrates courts, in particular, to be able to follow. There has been too much change in the criminal law, one way or the other, for that ever to have been a plausible way out. I thank the Government for their concession on this matter, but I hope that they will keep thinking about how to resolve the problem, which they have rightly identified, in a more comprehensive way.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Lords reason: No. 285B.

Maria Eagle: I beg to move, That this House does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendment No. 285.
	I am pleased that at least we will have an offence of inciting hatred on the grounds of sexual orientation on the statute book. That is very positive, and everybody in the House should be pleased about it, as I am. It is a necessary provision.
	The other place has insisted on its amendment, and I can advise the House that the Government will not resist it. We had a full debate yesterday, when there was a frank exchange of views. Perhaps not as much consensus emerged at the end as we might have hoped, although the vote was quite largethere was a 202 majority. We remain of the view that the amendment is undesirable and unnecessary; it does not add anything to the law as it would stand without its inclusion. However, as the Minister of State, Ministry of Justice, my right hon. Friend the Member for Delyn (Mr. Hanson), has explained, there is an urgent need for the Bill to receive Royal Assent.
	I say to the House that between now and commencement we will prepare guidancewe had an extensive debate yesterday about guidance and its importanceexplaining the operation of the new offences, taking into account the views and concerns expressed across this House and in the other place. Of course there will be an opportunitydoubtless there will be frequent opportunitiesto revisit the issue in due course if it is the will of this House or the other House to do so. On that basis, I would like to propose that we do not disagree with the Lords in their said amendment.

Edward Garnier: I congratulate the Government or, at least, this part of the Government, on having some connection with rationality; I congratulate them collectively and as individual Ministers on the part that they have played in brokering this sensible solution. I know that it is not easy for Ministers to have to accept alterations to legislation that they have so carefully thought about over many months, but the facts of life have returned to haunt them. I do not wish to crow about that for a moment. It is worth pointing out that of those who supported Lord Waddingtonto whom considerable praise is owed13 took the Labour Whip and two were bishops.
	I hope that every party will now coalesce around this solution and that those who are concerned about issues of detail will suppress those concerns for the greater good of the legislation as a whole so that the provision that is most central to this extraordinary Billthe right to strike of prison officerscan be put on the statute book as quickly as possible. My hon. Friend the Member for Arundel and South Downs (Nick Herbert) is at the Prison Officers Association annual conference, and I know that the Secretary of State will be there tomorrow, to read the speech that my hon. Friend has made and to make his own.
	I congratulate the Government on their magnanimous approach to this aspect of the Bill and also those of my hon. Friends who have supported Lord Waddington so doughtily in the stance that he has taken [ Interruption. ] I hear a squeak, probably from the Liberal Democrats, suggesting that this is a free vote. It is a free vote, but we are making public law, and I would hope that all of us could sensibly agree that the position at which we have arrived, while not wholly satisfactory to everybody, is sensible and one that the rational elements among us can agree is the right way forward. I thank the Minister for her remarks and hope that we can now move forward.

David Howarth: I regret the announcement that the Minister has felt constrained to make. I accept that the Government do not want to take this route, but feel forced to do so by the political and industrial relations conditions, but the House should not let this Lords amendment through without some form of protest.
	The Waddington amendment remains unacceptable to me for all the reasons that I gave yesterday. It claims that there is doubt about a statutory provision about which there is no doubt. The new offence of stirring up homophobic hatred is clear. It can be committed only by threats or with intent. There is no doubt about its content. To put into the statute a section that says
	for the avoidance of doubt
	implies doubt where there is none and, by its very existence, throws into doubt the rest of the section.
	The second point is one that I return to without any regret. The Waddington amendment relies on a vague phraseof itselfthat is without clear meaning. It assumes that words can be spoken outside their context. We were told yesterday that the problem was that the police believe that words by themselves can be threats. That is nonsense. It is a bad argument that because someone else believes in nonsense, it should be put into a statutory section. If ever a problem would better be dealt with by guidance than by statute, this is it.
	I stick to the third point that I made yesterday, which is my most serious point. The part of the Waddington amendment about urging people to change their sexual behaviour is inherently dangerous, because it is about not only words but actionaction in a context that means it might well amount to threats. The exemption might be interpreted as creating a loophole, and not only that: in the longer term, people of ill will will be tempted to use the phrase as a euphemisma codefor behaviour that is inherently threatening in its context and intention.

John Bercow: I entirely agree with the hon. Gentleman's assertion that the Waddington amendment is both superfluous and undesirable. The Government are conceding this point for entirely understandable, tactical reasons, but that does not affect the issue of principle. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that there is some significance in the fact that the most vociferous supporters of the Waddington amendment are people who have consistently opposed the creation of the offence of homophobic hate crime?

David Howarth: I fully agree. Anyone who was standing at the Bar in the Lords today, as I was, will fully accept that point and agree with the hon. Gentleman. If there was ever a circumstance in which people's words were different from their meaning, it was in the other place this afternoon.
	I accept that there is a problem that has to be dealt with. It is the problem of the misinterpretation by the police of existing law, which has led to some ludicrous investigations. It should be said that those investigations took place under the Public Order Acts, which use completely different wordsthey talk about threatening, abusive or insulting language rather than threats alone, which are the words of the proposed offence.
	Nevertheless, there might be a problem. The question is about the right way to deal with that problem. The Government offered a way to do that today through the use of statutory guidancea proposal, as I said yesterday, with a good deal of merit. It was rejected by the House of Lords when they accepted the Waddington amendment. It is a sensible way of approaching the question.
	In addition, a proposal was put forward yesterday by the Liberal Democrats and, in a different way, by the Conservatives, to add some procedural protection under which the Attorney-General or the prosecution authorities, whoever they might be in the future, would have to have special regard to freedom of expression or, in the case of the Conservative proposal, to quite a few other human rights, too, before deciding to bring a prosecution. As I said yesterday, that is an important protection. It is not merely meaningless words, and it provides at least some hope of judicial review in some circumstances.
	Our view is that the right way to deal with the problem of the absurd investigations would be a combination of the Government's proposals on guidance and one of the procedural protections proposed by my party and the Conservative party. I deeply regret the fact that the Government have not chosen to go down that route. They had the opportunity to accept that route tonight, at this late stage. They chose not to, because of the lateness of the hour and the political circumstances in which they find themselves. I should remind the Government that they decided to add to the Bill the provisions about industrial relations in the prison system. They could have chosen a different way to do things. The Bill is full of far too many clauses on different issues that have been in the process of being dealt with for far too long. In terms of good legislative practice, it is near to being a disaster. On the offence that we are discussing, my party believes that tonight the Government have caved in to forces to which they should never contemplate caving in.

Evan Harris: I should like to support my hon. Friend's amendment (a), which he wishes to pursue, and to identify and discuss the three reasons the Government find themselves in an unsatisfactory position. Two of their problems are self-inflicted, but one is a genuine problem that we discussed yesterday.
	The first self-inflicted problem relates to the timetable that they set themselves with regard to the prison officers issue, which has already been discussed. There were alternative ways of going about the matter. It is unfortunate that the Government are accepting a good offence being made worse because of the timetable. The second problem concerns their failure to win the vote in the House of Lords. If Members read the  Hansard of both occasions, they will see that the argument was won, but the vote was not.
	The first time that the amendment tabled by Lord Waddington and his colleagues saw the light of day, the Government insisted on the House of Lords sitting late into the night, but regrettably they could muster only 57 people when the vote came. They lost by 81 votes to 57. The turnout was better tonight; I understand that the vote was 178 to 168, and that a significant number of Government Members were there. That is laudable, but as the hon. and learned Member for Harborough (Mr. Garnier) said, 13 Government Members still voted for the amendment. I am pleased to say that the Liberal Democrats in the other place were far more cohesive. I understand that none of them voted for the amendment. Given the numbers, the matter was in the Government's hands; they could have prevented us from being in this position, and it is regrettable that they failed.
	The issue of significance is the widespread concern, which I and other colleagues yesterday accepted exists, about the misapplication by the police of existing offences that threaten freedom of expression. The Under-Secretary of State for Justice, the hon. Member for Liverpool, Garston (Maria Eagle) kindly offered to meet us to discuss whether guidance could be provided, not just on the new offence that we are discussingI was pleased to hear her say that she still intends to produce guidance on that offencebut on sections 4A and 5 of the Public Order Act 1986, which have caused widespread concern.
	It is acceptable and understandable for Members of this House to express concern about whether freedom of speech is unreasonably threatened by legislation, but as my hon. Friend the Member for Cambridge (David Howarth) set out, the offence of hatred on the ground of sexual orientation is very narrow. There is no doubt about the offence; the only doubt is introduced by Lords amendment No. 285. It will create more problems than it seeks to solve. The lesson is that although we must be vigilant about free speech, we must go about things in a more deliberative way.
	I ask the Government to consider thinking more deeply about freedom of expression and whether there could be a review of where we are now, so that we can ensure that the police, the prosecutors and the public know what they can do, and so that concerns are not expressed, as they were yesterday, about whether strongly held views that are offensive will be subject to the criminal law. I hope that the Government will recognise that the problem may come back again, unless there is clarity on that point; this is the second time that they have found themselves in difficulty on the issue.
	I make one final point. We Liberal Democrats are keen to preserve freedom of expression, as can be seen in our amendment (a). I recognise that there is support among Conservative Members for freedom of expression. However, I note that more than 50 Conservative Members voted last night to maintain our blasphemy laws. That is inconsistent of them. I regret the fact that we are in this position, and I will certainly vote in protest at the fact that we have not had the opportunity to register that regret.

Question put, That this House does not insist on its disagreement with the Lords in their amendment:
	 The House divided: Ayes 324, Noes 46.

Question accordingly agreed to.

Road Safety (Hertfordshire)

Michael Penning: It is a great pleasure to present to the House a petition on behalf of my constituents in Nash Mills parish, as well as the constituents of St. Albans, into where Lower Road bridge runs from my constituency. The petition is signed by 550 residents. That does not sound a particularly large number, but they represent nearly all the families who are having their lives blighted by the dangers of Lower Road bridge in Nash Mills. The Victorian bridge and tunnel has no footpath and was designed for the horse and carriage, not the 40-tonne lorries, buses, cars and motorcycles that go through the tunnel today. Some 2,217 movements were recorded in three hours through this tunnel, with no public footpath whatsoever.
	The petition states:
	The Petition of those concerned about the safety of Lower Road bridge in Nash Mills,
	Declares that a safety crossing and traffic calming system is urgently needed for the Lower Road bridge in Nash Mills; that the Victorian bridge and tunnel has no footpath or alternative safe route being designed for horse and carriages rather than 40 tonne lorries; that a local traffic survey found that on 24th October 2007 between 2pm and 5pm there were 2,217 movements through the bridge including HGV lorries, buses, vans, cars, motorbikes and pedestrians; that a large proportion of the pedestrians crossing the bridge are children; that 50 children live in the 150 dwellings in what is known as no mans land (Lower Road, Hyde Lane and Woodlands Road) and have to cross the bridge to access the local park; that further planned developments nearby (residential and business) are likely to exacerbate the problem on this bridge which has three junctions on its south side; and that if the Government is encouraging children to walk to school it should ensure the environment for them to do so is a safe one.
	The Petitioners therefore request that the House of Commons urges the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to instruct the local authority to look into solutions to the problem which should include the introduction of pedestrian lights; reducing the height restriction on the bridge to 11 ft 4 in; adding a footpath and sensor light; painting the inside of the bridge white and lighting it 24 hours a day;
	because during the day pedestrians cannot see inside the bridge at all and are completely blind
	putting a speed camera in the Lower Road on the bend; providing islands to assist pedestrians in crossing the road and to consult further with the local community to ensure everybody's safety.
	And the Petitioners remain, etc.
	[P000145]

South West Regional Spatial Strategy

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn. [Mr. Watts.]

Laurence Robertson: I am pleased to have secured this debate. I am very grateful to the Minister for staying behind to reply, particularly as we did not know what time it would be when we got to this stage.
	The subject of this debatethe implications for Tewkesbury of the south west regional spatial strategyis especially important. Not only do we have green belt, green fields and beautiful areas in my constituency that we wish to protect, but, as the world knows, we have a problem with flooding. I say as the world knows because it is true. On recent trips to three countries in the far east and four countries in the Caribbean, my constituency of Tewkesbury was known about for the wrong reasonthe terrible floods of July 2007. It is worth remembering that as a result of those floods, three people lost their lives and thousands had their homes and businesses flooded. Hundreds of thousands lost mains water suppliessome for up to three weeksand power supplies were affected. The effects of the July 2007 floods remain with us. Even now, almost 10 months on, approximately 385 households in my constituency are still displaced from their homes, and some are probably still months from returning to them. Business in certain parts of my constituency remains depressed.
	I have held two Adjournment debates on flooding and on each occasionand on many other occasionsI have said the following. People in my constituency accept that living at the confluence of two rivers means that the area will flood every so often. Fields in the area flood a number of times each year. Although we all accept that the rainfall of 20 July 2007 was exceptional, we believe that certain factors made the flooding worse than it needed to be. One factor was the poor maintenance of the culverts, sewers, drains, ditches and waterways, but the other factor was that too many houses have been built in flood risk areas. People accept that the area will flood, but the one overriding message that people give to me, which they want me to pass on to the Minister, is that we should not be making the situation any worse than it needs to be. We should mitigate, rather than escalate, the problem. Imagine, then, the disappointment and anger at the contents of the regional spatial strategy, which proposes the building of thousands of houses in my constituency, in areas that have to be classed as at risk of flooding.
	Before I go any further, let me state what should be the obvious. This is not just a matter of whether the new houses flood. Houses built in the wrong place take up field space that would otherwise have soaked up water, thereby preventing that water from resting on those fields. Water will be sent into other areas, causing terrible flooding. In other words, the run-off of water from one development causes other developments to flood. That fact should be obvious, but certain people just focus on whether the new houses flood. That is missing the point, either deliberately or otherwise. Those people also state that houses built in those areas should be flood-resilient. Again, that is missing the point, because the presence of these houses causes other houses to flood. It is my submission, therefore, that to build thousands of houses in or around my constituency would be madness. What further evidence, other than three deaths, people still being out of their homes and business still being flat 10 months on, do those taking the decisions need to persuade them to build houses elsewhere?
	In the RSS, the required number of houses for the whole housing market area is about 56,400, with 23 per cent. of thesea total of 13,100proposed for the Tewkesbury district. If we want to talk about constituency boundaries, 27.7 per cent.15,600 houseswould be within my constituency, much of which is a flood risk area. If we analyse those figures, we see that the RSS proposes the building of many houses at Longford and Innsworth, close to the Walham power station, which, as everyone knows, almost went under during the 2007 floods. If the water had risen much higher at that power station, hundreds of thousands of people would have lost their mains power supply, and that was almost the case. If that area is not at risk of flooding, what is? How can it make sense to propose to build houses in such an area?
	Houses also flooded in Bishop's Cleeve, but the RSS proposes the building of thousands of houses close to that village. Uckington floods, and flood alleviation schemes are being built to contain the River Chelt in that area. Yet again, thousands of houses are being proposed for that area, and 2,900 houses are proposed for the rest of the Tewkesbury district. From conversations that I have held with planners, it appears that those houses might have to be built close to Tewkesbury town, which was badly affected only last year, and remains so. No one can forget the television images of the town surrounded by water.
	The evidence of the problems of excessive building is already there for all to see. For example, in Bredon road in Tewkesbury, houses in the process of being built flooded, and houses that were built in Noverton lane worsened the flooding in the village of Prestbury, where in Junenever mind Julyhouses flooded for the first time in people's 40-year memories. They flooded again in July of course, and the streets became like rivers. Who can say that those extra houses did not worsen matters?
	The Government often say that they have strengthened the case against building in flood risk areas through planning policy statement 25. However, a glance at that document, which was published in December 2006months before the terrible floods in 2007shows that the guidance on building outside flood risk areas is qualified by wider sustainability objectives. The exceptional test allows building in flood risk areas.
	So what is the principle that underpins PPS25? Is it avoiding inappropriate development in flood risk areas or ensuring that housing targets are met? In other words, the exceptional test undermines the principle of the whole document and disregards the dangers and major disruptions experienced by people who live in flood risk areas.
	As Sir Michael Pitt says in his interim report:
	Some respondents felt that the introduction of this test could be interpreted as a get-out clause for local authorities
	or, in this case, the RSS. Crucially, he continues:
	A decision to permit development should not be taken lightly by the planning authority, not least because a prospective purchaser will generally assume that the granting of planning permission signals that the local authority does not perceive there to be a problem with flood risk.
	That is a good point. Who will buy those houses if they are perceived to be likely to flood, and if there are problems with insuring them? Earlier today, the Association of British Insurers told me:
	We want to ensure that wherever possible new homes are not built in high flood risk areas. If they are, then insurers cannot guarantee to offer cover.
	Planning policy statement 25 calls for flood risk assessments to be made at all levels of the planning process. However, what flood risk assessments were made during the compilation of the RSS, a document that was largely drawn up before the floods of July 2007? Does not that in itself make it incumbent on the Secretary of State to require the authors to go back to the drawing board on their housing proposals?
	What constitutes a flood risk area? If the definition is based on annual likelihood of flooding, how can that be assessed if we accept that climate change is taking place? In other words, a place with a one in a 100 chance of flooding in the past can no longer be assumed to be in that category if the climate is changing as the Government tell us it is.
	We are, of course, supposed to be protected from inappropriate development by the Environment Agency. However, an appeal to build 600 houses near Longford in my constituency, close to Walham sub-station, is currently being considered by the Secretary of State. I have submitted photographs of at least part of that site when flooded, yet the Environment Agency did not even submit an objection to the application. Even worse, the Environment Agency said that the area did not have a monitoring station on the site, but it does. That station indicated flooding, so I hope that the Secretary of State will take that error into account when assessing the appeal.
	I suggest that the fact that the Environment Agency has not objected to the proposed building at Longford is evidence that, as currently constituted, it is simply not up to the job and its role should be reviewed. How can the Environment Agency, when it has seen the effects of the flooding in my area, fail to object to the proposals to build thousands more houses there? It defies belief. Of course, some might describe my objection to those houses as an example of nimbyismbut if it is, so be it. I am paid to represent the people of my constituency, and I do not believe it to be in their best interests to have those houses.
	Let us consider the situation somewhat more widely. Village post offices are closing, including a further six in my constituency, pubs are closing at the rate of an estimated 27 a week, and village shops are struggling. So why not top up the housing stock in villages throughout the country? Many villages are calling for such development, partly so that their own people can continue to live in the villages where they were born.
	Why is the concentration on principal urban areas? Why are so many houses needed in the first place? What is the science used to calculate the need for such housing stock? It cannot be that the divorce rate and the life expectancy figures are still accelerating to such a degree. However, I accept that the net immigration figures are a worry, with a total of 1.62 million more people coming to this country than leaving it over the past 10 years, which puts pressure on housing. That perhaps needs tackling as a separate problem. The method of calculation, immigration, the dispersal of houses and the planning process are all underlying issues that the Government should tackle, rather than allowing unelected regional bureaucrats to make crude calculations about the number of houses that we are supposed to need in each constituency.
	The Government have made two promises that are relevant to this debate. One, which they made before being elected to office, was to end the predict-and-provide approach to housing. That has not happened; in fact that approach has been entrenched, and on a regional basis, which is why we are in the current predicament. The second promise, made after last week's election results, was that the Prime Minister would listen to people's concerns.
	The Prime Minister paid a welcome visit to my constituency during the flooding. I now call on him, the Secretary of State and the Minister to listen to what the people of Tewkesbury are saying: that building extra housing to the level proposed by the RSS would make the risk of flooding in the area significantly worse, with the risk to life, property, business and possessions being greatly heightened.
	When he visited Tewkesbury, the Prime Minister saw for himself the water, the bowsers, the problems at Walham and the Mythe, and the enormous efforts that people were making to help each other. I know that he would not want us to go through that again. So through his Secretary of State and the Minister who is here tonight, the Prime Minister needs to reject the proposals in the RSS to which I have referred, in order to reduce that likelihood. To refuse to do so will be to fail to respond to the situation in which we found ourselves last year, and will also represent a failure to listen. As only the changes that the Minister makes to the RSS will be open to further public consultation, this is our last chance to affect the outcome of what, to us, is a crucial process.

Iain Wright: I congratulate the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) on securing this debate. I am aware that he raised similar issues during a debate on the south west regional spatial strategy in January, to which my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary to the Treasury responded, when she was Minister for Housing. The hon. Gentleman has this evening reiterated how important the regional spatial strategy for the south-west is to him and his constituents, and I commend him on that.
	However, I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will be aware that I shall have to disappoint him tonight. Like my right hon. Friend in January, I am unable to respond to many of his concerns. The RSS process is a quasi-judicial one involving plans and planning decisions, and I do not wish in any way to prejudice the impartiality of my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State in coming to a decision. I apologise to the hon. Gentleman for that, but I hope that he will accept it.
	It would be helpful to start by giving some background to the regional spatial strategy. A regional spatial strategy is a requirement of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004. That piece of legislation, and the role of the RSS in particular, helped to strengthen the role and importance of regional planning. A regional spatial strategy's purpose is to set out a broad development strategy for a 20-year period. I acknowledge that the process undertaken in the preparation of a regional spatial strategy is often described as, at best, laborious. However, the regional spatial strategy is a vital document. The length of the process rightly reflects the need for extensive dialogue in its preparation.
	A regional spatial strategy is a key component in achieving more sustainable development and provides a spatial context for local development frameworks and other strategies and spending frameworks. Regional spatial strategies include issues such as how much housing is needed, the general location where it should be built, the priorities for new infrastructure and economic development, the strategy for protecting countryside and biodiversity and the policy for reducing carbon emissions and safeguarding natural resourcesfor example, water and minerals.
	It might also assist the hon. Member for Tewkesbury if I mentioned something about the history of the regional spatial strategy in his area of the south-west. As he will be aware, responsibility for the initial drafting of the regional spatial strategy rested with the regional assembly, which submitted its draft to the Government on 24 April 2006. A 12-week public consultation gave the opportunity to put comments to an independent panel, which was appointed by the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government to test the soundness of the draft regional spatial strategy.
	Following that, an examination in public was held between April and July 2007 to discuss and test the draft regional spatial strategy before the panel. The length of the examination in the public stage reflected the level of interest in the draft RSS, with the panel reviewing comments from almost 2,000 different parties. I understand that 191 organisations and individuals took part in public hearings held in Exeter. The panel's report was submitted to the Government on 10 December 2007 and was published for information on 10 January 2008. It contains recommendations to the Secretary of State on all aspects of the draft regional spatial strategy.
	I have now set out the background to the draft RSS, but I reiterate what I said in my opening remarksthat I hope that the hon. Gentleman will understand that on account of the quasi-judicial nature of the process, I am very much constrained in what I am able to say at this stage about the detailed proposals contained within the RSS. I must point out that in taking quasi-judicial decisions under the Planning Acts, there is clear guidance for Ministers, which is based on advice from the Law Officers and First Treasury Counsel. A copy of the guidance can be found on the website of the Department for Communities and Local Government and is entitled Guidance on propriety issues in handling planning casework in Communities and Local Government. If it would assist the hon. Gentleman, I can certainly provide him with a copy of it. That guidance outlines that Ministers should not enter into discussions with interested parties on the changes that might be made to a draft regional spatial strategy while consideration is being given to the panel's report.

Martin Horwood: Will the Minister give way?

Iain Wright: I certainly will, even though the hon. Gentleman was not in his place at the start of the debate.

Martin Horwood: I am very grateful; I was listening to the debate from another location. The Minister says that the examination in public took account of many hundreds of submissions. However, in an area called Leckhampton, which straddles the boundary between the constituency of the hon. Member for Tewkesbury (Mr. Robertson) and my own, up to 1,300 extra homes have been approved for building on land that is waterlogged as we speak. That development, which will increase flooding in parts of both my and the hon. Gentleman's constituency downhill, has been approved despite hundreds of objections from local people. In effect, those unelected inspectors have made this decision with no democratic accountability. If the Minister will not answer questions on this strategy, where are we to ask them and how are we to challenge this decision making?

Iain Wright: The hon. Gentleman has made his case, but I am not that tempted to respond to it. As I have tried to explain, the whole process regarding the regional spatial strategy is a quasi-judicial one and I do not want to be tempted to make any comment that would prejudice in any way the Secretary of State's ability to come to an impartial view about the figures and the detail contained within the RSS. I hope that the hon. Gentleman understands that point.
	As I said earlier, the panel's report was submitted to the Government on 10 December and was published for information the following month. I am sure that the hon. Member for Tewkesbury would like me to explain, following the publication of the report for information, what the next step is. The Secretary of State is now considering the panel's report, along with all the representations previously submitted, and aims to publish her proposed changes as soon as possible. I must stress that at this stage no conclusions have been reached on any of the panel's recommendations. There will then be a 12-week period of public consultation when the proposed changes are published. That will be the opportunity for those interested in the content of the regional spatial strategy to make their comments known. Following consideration of comments and views arising from that consultation, the Secretary of State expects to publish the final regional spatial strategy before the end of 2008.

Laurence Robertson: Am I right in thinking that only the changes the Secretary of State proposes will go out to public consultationin other words, the whole lot does not go out again, but only the changes?

Iain Wright: Yes, that is my understanding: the proposed changes will be put out for the 12-week consultation.
	The hon. Gentleman raised important points on flooding in his area. Again, I will not be drawn into talking about specific details, or about specific housing developments and planning permissions on floodplains. I should, however, point out that the Government believe that effective flood defences are a vital component of new infrastructure, and that they will be an integral part of development. Also, it is for councils to take key decisions on individual developments, but we have put in place the toughest planning rules ever through planning policy statement 25. For the first time, all councils must now consult the Environment Agency on their housing plans, to ensure that all new homes are safe from flooding and properly sustainable for the future. Those new rules have been praised by Sir Michael Pitt and the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee's report on flooding, and they have been backed by the Association of British Insurers. I am pleased that we have put in place the toughest planning rules ever with regard to development on flood risk areas.

Martin Horwood: The Minister might be interested to know that not all the environmental organisations accept that the new planning guidance is sufficient, partly because it is only site-specific, so it does not take into account the overall landscape. If a site is entirely inundated with water, it does not really matter where the drainage goes. If the overall landscape has been allowed to develop in such a way that there is too much urbanisation, increasing run-off or increasing surface-water flooding, the local site-specific consultation will not be sufficient. Does the Minister not see the problem with that?

Iain Wright: To some extent, the hon. Gentleman is making the argument for a regional spatial strategy. These matters sometimes transcend local boundaries, so it is important that we have a regional overview. Essentially, however, it is up to local authorities to carry out developments in a plan-led process, in order to make sure that the whole environment is considered when deciding where development should take place.
	I am sure thatnot for the first timeI will have disappointed the hon. Member for Tewkesbury that I have been unable to enter into a debate on the content of the south west regional spatial strategy. However, I am sure he will continue to represent his constituents' views energetically when the proposed changes are published shortly. He has done that tonight, and he did it in the debate in January.

Laurence Robertson: I am not satisfied with planning policy statement 25 as it is inadequate in that it compromises itself. My main point, however, is this: although I understand that the Minister is in a difficult position with regard to the process, all I am asking him to do is consider the serious points I have made about the difficulties the RSS will cause us in Tewkesbury. Will he have a serious discussion with the Secretary of State about the points I have made? That is all I expect of him tonight.

Iain Wright: As I said, I will not do anything that will compromise the ability of the Secretary of State to be able to come to an impartial decision, based on the report that is put on their desk, with regard to the RSS. The hon. Gentleman has made his case on behalf of his constituents most eloquently tonight, as he has in previous debates, and I would expect nothing less from him.
	 Question put and agreed to.
	 Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes past Nine o'clock.

Deferred Division

Temporary and agency workers (equal treatment) Bill [Money]: Queen's recommendation signified . 
	That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Temporary and Agency Workers (Equal Treatment) Bill, it is expedient to authorise
	(1) the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any expenditure incurred under or by virtue of the Act by a Minister of the Crown or government department: and
	(2) any increase attributable to the Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other enactment.
	 The House divided: Ayes 267, Noes 196.

Question accordingly agreed to.